Auld Lang Syne
by carlyinrome
Summary: R. Sex, violence, dirty words, character death, noncon. Buffy&Angel, with a full cast behind them. 2017, Buffy and Angel are married, parenting . . . and haunted. WIP. Spoilers through Blind Date on AtS and Primeval on BtVS.
1. Prophecies

**Christmas Eve, 1998  
Sunnydale, California**

_Hmm. You think you can fight me? I'm not a daemon, little girl. I am something that you can't even conceive. The First Evil. Beyond sin, beyond death. I am the thing the darkness fears. You'll never see me, but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate._

**Sunday, December 10th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

"Tape."

"Tape?"

Reagan looked up at her friend from behind a sheath of straight, dark hair. "Hand me the tape."

Chloe grinned sheepishly. "Tape. Right." She handed her the tape. "Sorry."

Reagan Nicole Gryphon was sixteen, tall, dark; pretty, with soft curves and lines, her mother's figure, her father's coloring. She had soft skin with a mother of pearl complexion, long, thick brown hair, and dark, almond shaped eyes. Her face was rounded and soft, lit up with her alert chocolate eyes and pretty, flirting mouth.

Her friend, the bright and bubbly blonde Chloe Elissa Rosenberg, was small and svelte, but more petite than Reagan, pale-skinned with straight honey blonde tresses cut short and falling around her head in a desperately unruly manner, blue-green eyes, a small, button of a nose, augmented by a spray of freckles across the bridge.

Reagan straightened the sheet on a crease, folded it over the edge of the gift box sitting contentedly in her lap, and pulled a piece of tape from the little plastic frame. She placed it squarely along the edge, smoothed it down.

Finished, she placed it on the floor beside her, stuck a shiny, red, pre-folded, sticky-bottomed bow on the top.

"Thoughts?" 

Chloe rolled her eyes. "You are a present-wrapping czar. A god, even."

The raven-haired girl stuck out her tongue contemptuously. "Sarcasm gets you nowhere."

The honey-blonde laughed, green eyes sparkling. "But it's a lot of fun."

"You're impossible," she murmured, standing with the gift and settling next to her friend on the bed.

"That's true. But you love me, all the same."

"That's true," Reagan mused, sticking on a self-adhesive label and penning a quick message. "That just might be the reason . . ."

"Not my delightful wit? My stifling beauty?"

"Well, those things, too."

"Is that the last one?" Chloe asked, taking the present, putting it close to her ear and shaking it.

Reagan gently took the box from her. "Yes. And no peeking . . ."

"But it's not even for me!"

"I still don't want you to break it, Chloe."

"Okay . . . are you gonna tell me what it is?"

"The curiosity will kill you, won't it?" 

She pulled herself up from stomach and came into a sitting position. "Probably. Tell me."

"No."

"But . . . that's not fair."

"You should have paid attention while we were shopping for it, hmm?" Reagan asked, sliding off the bed and taking the gift to her closet, where she placed it on the top shelf, closing the door and returning to the bed.

"But I wasn't. And I want to know."

"You whine a lot." 

"And you . . . well, you do _something_ a lot. Let me see!"

"No." She checked her watch. "We're late, anyway."

"But I want to know," the pretty blonde murmured.

"And I'll tell you. On the way there. all right?"

"Yeah . . . okay," she consented, following suit and rising after her friend.

Reagan grabbed her coat, slipped it on, and pulled her purse off her desk pulled it on, sliding the leather strap over her shoulder. Chloe took her coat and bag and followed her friend down the stairs.

"When are you leaving?" a voice sounded when the two sixteen-year-old girls reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Right now, Daddy." 

Reagan's father emerged from his study at the end of the hall, entered the foyer. "What time will you be home?"

"Eleven. Eleven thirty," Reagan told him.

"Are you driving?" 

"Yes, sir."

"Is Chloe spending the night?" 

"Isn't she always?" she grinned.

He smiled a little. "Do you have the necessary . . ." he cleared his throat. "The –"

Chloe raised an eyebrow. "Hey. I know Reagan's a Slayer. You can say 'stake,' Angel."

He smiled. "Don't your parents miss you?" he teased.

"They're getting ready for another expedition." She lamented.

"Where?" 

She sighed. "Brazil, this time."

Angel frowned. "For Christmas?"

She nodded. "Yeah. For Christmas." 

He sighed and took her into a quick hug. "You know you're always welcomed here."

She grinned as he let her go. "And even if I'm not, I'll still be here."

He chuckled. "Hmm." He turned to his daughter. "Stake?"

"Check." 

"Cross?"

She lifted it off her chest to show him. "Check."

"Cell phone?"

"Check," she asserted, tapping her purse.

"Kiss your father before you leave?"

She went over, hugged him quickly, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Check."

He smiled. "all right. Get out of here. Have fun."

**Sunday, December 10th, 2017  
The Bronze**

_i don't want a lot for Christmas/   
there's just one thing i need/  
i don't care about presents/   
underneath the Christmas tree/_

Reagan stared out over the Bronze, hot lights on her face, smell and weight of smoke on her body. She closed her eyes and let the bass take her, the heavy burning sensation the music left on her enveloping her in its undeniable perfection of weight per square inch of her senses.

_i just want you for my own/  
more than you could ever know/  
make my wish come true . . ./  
all i want for Christmas/  
is you . . ./_

Reagan looked back briefly at Chloe, opening her eyes briefly. She was hammering on her bass, sapphire eyes on the strings. 

Reagan took a deep breath at the rest, turned, closed her eyes again, and sang. As she did, issued the soulful, buttery alto forth, her muscles relaxed, she drifted somewhere far away, and immersed herself in the bass imbued sound. This was her release. Slaying – hunting – was life, now, and there was a kind of calm, the orgasmic relaxation of her senses, her body, after satisfying the kill, the adrenalin leaving her in a slackening of muscles and world, but this . . . this was the real peace, the only true niche she could cozy back into, make herself warm and safe within her own mind, her own world.

_i don't want a lot for Christmas/  
there is just one thing i need/  
i don't care about presents/  
underneath the Christmas tree/  
i don't need to hang my stocking/  
there upon the fireplace/  
Santa Claus won't make me happy/  
with a toy on Christmas day/  
i just want you for my own/  
more than you could ever know/  
make my wish come true/  
all i want for Christmas is you . . ./_

In her domed peace of mind, the quiet in her head, she could hear Chris on drums, and felt that familiar fluttering in her stomach. She had been dating Chris Walker for almost two years now, and had been absolutely smitten with him since they'd met. She'd been singing at the Bronze, one of her first times singing in front of an audience like that, nervous, hands shaking as they gripped the cold microphone, eyes closed tight, to bring her to the quiet where all she knew was the music. Afterwards, she'd come around from the backstage to the main floor, moved through the mess of people in a clouded daze, the bitter aftertaste that fear always left floating around her. She was numb all over, not quite knowing why, or caring particularly, but the fact remained that her person felt made of rubber, or something not quite human. And Chris had come up to her, without apparent plan or reason, while she was standing at the bar; nursing a Sprite her stomach was too tense for. He'd looked at her, his hazel eyes shining earnestly, pushing stray strands of sandy hair from his eyes when they found their way into his line of vision, losing a perpetual battle. It was something she usually found annoying, but found desperately endearing in him. He'd looked at her, quite obviously flustered, and then spoke: 

"You were really great up there."

It'd taken her by surprise. Apparently, it had taken him by surprise, as well. He grinned a little lopsided grin, embarrassed.

"I mean . . . well, I have this band, and . . . well, we need . . ." He'd stopped, extended a hand. "My name's Chris. Chris Walker. I play the drums in a band. We need . . ." he stopped again. "We need you."

_you baby . . ./_

She'd gone to meet the band, partially because she wanted to belong to one, and partially because she'd been taken by Chris. The band was hurting a little for variety, but included some talent. Chris was absolutely a prodigy on the drums, unusually skilled, not only with following written music, but with thinking up his own rhythms, creating impromptu ballads, things of that nature.

_i won't ask for much this Christmas/  
i won't even wish for snow/  
i'm just gonna keep on waiting/  
underneath the mistletoe/  
i won't make a list and send it/  
to the North Pole for Saint Nick/  
i won't even stay awake to/  
hear those magick reindeer click/  
'cause i just want you here tonight/  
holding on to me so tight/  
what more can i do/  
baby all i want for Christmas is you/ _

Scott Matthews, who was now Chloe's off and on boyfriend – much to the chagrin of one Julianna Wyndam-Pryce, Reagan's twin's best friend and long time admirer of the band's lead guitar – had been one of three of the band's guitarists, all of which refused to play anything other than lead. They didn't have a bassist, and Emily, Scott's sister, had been on vocals. Until she'd gotten her tonsils removed, at which point she could no longer produce even the simplest scales.

Reagan had shown up at practice in Chris's den, nervous, and listened to them play. Then Chris handed out new music and led Reagan to the microphone, her first shot at vocals with the band. First and last chance.

_you . . ./  
all the lights are shining/  
so brightly everywhere/  
and the sound of children's/  
laughter fills the air/  
and everyone is singing/   
i hear those sleigh bells ringing/  
Santa won't you bring me the one i really need -/  
won't you please bring my baby to me . . ./ _

She'd sung, Fiona Apple's "First Taste," a song she'd loved since she was little. Most of her father's albums had become hers by the time she was twelve, a lot of older composers, those, the classics, but newer things, too, Billie Holiday and Tori Amos, the Smashing Pumpkins, Dollshead, a thousand lessons in bass and rhythm, deep bluesy things that formed her voice, helped her train it, and "Tidal" was included. She'd closed her eyes and let the words come out, let them flow the way she'd taught herself to while listening to the sirens that had captured her father's heart, and hers, as well. She got about halfway through before the band stopped playing and just listened. She didn't notice, certainly didn't stop, or slow until the last note.

_oh i don't want a lot for Christmas/  
this is all i'm asking for/  
i just want to see my baby/  
standing right outside my door/  
oh i just want him for my own/  
more than you could ever know/  
make my wish come true/  
baby all i want for Christmas is/  
you . . ./_

She'd opened her eyes, realized it was silent, and dread hit her squarely in the stomach. Had she been that bad? Scott looked at her, eyes a little wide, then at Chris.

"Where'd you find this girl?"

"Maybe I should go –"

She'd started to leave.

_. . . all i want for Christmas is you . . ./_

Chris had taken her arm, kept her there. "No. Stay."

"You . . . want me?"

He'd looked taken aback, mistaking her question. After realization hit him, he smiled, nodded. "Please?"

_. . . all i want for Christmas is you . . ./_

She had. The other two guitarists quit and formed their own band after realizing there could be only one lead guitarist, and Reagan had brought Chloe in after Chris had found out the girl was Hell on a bass. The four of them called the band "Faithless" and had slowly become the Bronze's pet band; the band people came there to hear. Chris had – finally – managed to ask Reagan out, and they'd been together since then.

Chris was . . . special. They'd both grown out of pure infatuation and into something deeper, something more, something better. They were happy together, good together.

It was love, and it was nice. 

_. . . all i want for Christmas is you . . ./_

**Sunday, December 10th, 2017  
Angel and Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Angel."

He didn't want to open his eyes. He was warm and heavy all over, pleasantly felled with sleep after making love to his wife, a woman he would never stop loving, cherishing, needing. Buffy was next to him; he heard the voice and took her hand. Asleep, she didn't say anything, didn't do anything, but her hand was warm and closed a little on his when he clasped it, and he felt safe.

"Angel. Open your eyes, Angel."

He opened his eyes, but he wasn't quite sure why. 

"Darla."

He didn't remember saying it, or thinking of saying it, but there it was, said. He didn't understand why his thoughts were projecting themselves out into the real world outside his head, but he didn't let that bother him particularly, then.

She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, one hand on the door he distinctly remembered closing. She was wearing all black, or some dark color; he couldn't tell. At forty three, a human forty three, his eyes were getting weaker, senses relaxing, but he was fairly certain it was black. It looked more like lingerie than anything else, bodice lacy and tight, tying rigid across her abdomen, her chest, pulling her breasts in hard and rising them up, making all of her stern and steel.

He looked at her a moment and realized she was wearing a corset; it looked as if she were preparing for dressing back . . . back when one would consider a corset a needed article of clothing . . . back when they both belonged. Her hair was long, longer than he ever remembered it, curled like he remembered it the best, falling over her shoulders and breasts in unruly cascades. She looked like she was preparing for dressing.

Only not in black. Why would she be wearing black? 

There were other things, too, that weren't right. He was sure he'd closed the door. For that matter, he was also very sure that Darla was dead. But those things aside, he was mostly concerned with her sunglasses. Why in God's name would anyone need sunglasses in the middle of the night? Indoors?

They were sunglasses, couldn't be glasses, spectacles, reading glasses, not tapered and trendy like that, not painted black. They hid her eyes. He didn't like that she had something to hide.

Forgetting that he'd closed the door, and that Darla was dead.

"Hello, Angel." 

"Darla," he repeated. He whispered, afraid of waking Buffy. He did say it, this time, but it didn't come out the way he'd said it. He shook that off, not able to deal with things of that nature just then.

"Things are going pretty good for you, aren't they?"

He didn't understand. And he certainly didn't say so, not aloud. But it came out.

"I don't understand."

He was beginning to become frightened. No one said anything about this, however, verbally or subconsciously. 

"You're living your perfect 40's sitcom life with little Miss Bleach Blonde Homecoming and your charming Brady children. Far away from everything . . . from who you really are." 

"I don't know what you're talking about." This was true, so he said so. She smirked.

"You think you can just turn your back and run away from your past, from the things you've done? It's who you are. It'll always be that way."

He started to protest. She came over to him, sat on the bed next to him, stroked his hair.

"Hush," she murmured, putting her fingers to his lips to quiet him. It worked. He fell silent.

"Now listen to me," she continued, still petting him, taking his other hand, the one Buffy was not holding, and taking it into her own, massaging his fingers. "Listen. Just sleep, all right? Everything's going to work out. You'll see."

"Nothing's wrong," he whispered, feeling very tired and every one of his years all of a sudden.

She kissed him softly. "You don't understand, but that's all right. It's hardly your fault. Now, sleep. Everything will soon be the way it always was, the way it was meant. You'll see."

He wanted to argue, but he didn't. He closed his eyes.

And woke up.

He sat up abruptly, looked around him. His body still felt heavy, still felt warm, and he was tangled in the blankets. His wife was beside him, sleeping quietly, holding his hand. The door was closed.

Darla was dead.

He closed his eyes and went back to sleep, squeezing Buffy's hand a little, just to make sure that she was there, she was real, this was not a dream.

So far, so good.

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
New Sunnydale High School**

"all right, the thing about Macbeth that you really need to understand more than anything else it the _guilt_ that Shakespeare's characters felt. This . . . emotion . . . broke them down, stripped them of everything and left them what they really were and only that, or less." Angel picked up his copy of the book from his desk and took a step toward his students, looking briefly around the semi-circle of desks and the multitude of faces wearing varying degrees of interest. "I don't care if you walk away with this knowing themes, or characters, or lines . . . Hell, you don't have to know who wrote it as long as you understand that emotions, especially the purely volatile ones like grief, anger, greed, _guilt_ can become more real to a person than everything else. I want you to understand that the mind and the heart rule a person, not –" He paused, blinked. Darla was sitting in an unoccupied seat in the very back of the classroom, dressed in black, a short skirt and a clinging top, stylish black heels making her long legs seem more so. Her nails were black, and she held a black rose in one hand, playing with it absently. She wore no make-up, and her hair was back, away from her face. Both were dimmed by the gauzy black veil she wore, coming over her hair and over her eyes to cover her nose and the indention at the top of her lips.

Angel blinked again and continued his lecture, avoiding looking at her. ". . . that the mind and the heart rule a person, not their genes, or their –" He paused again. Darla looked at him from her seat, smiled. She put down the rose, laying it gently on the desk, and pulled the veil up over her face. Putting the first two fingers of her right hand to her blushing lips, she kissed them softly and turned over her hand, bending it gently at the wrist, exposing the pale skin of her delicate wrist and the underside of her forearm. Blew him a kiss.

"Professor Gryphon? Are you all right?"

Angel closed his eyes for a moment, thought. Macbeth. Macbeth. God, why were her eyes black?

He opened his eyes again. The room faded in a way it never had for him, didn't drift away like a dream, but gradually grew more and more washed, the colors fading, draining from around him, leaving him with nothing but the grey. His head hurt. His chest. Was it getting hot? And why was it hard to breathe?

Why were her eyes black?

"Professor Gryphon?"

He didn't feel anything as he fell to the floor, bending at the knees and collapsing in front of his desk, everything going black, still, warm. Flowing to nothing.

Falling, his hand hit the desk, banging the wrist and forcing him to drop his book to the same cold floor that would soon receive him. The book hit hard, pages fluttering open as the spine cracked against the floor.

_If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly._

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
Sunnydale Interior Designs Studio**

"Well, this color's really popular with heavier upholsteries," she tried, handing the finicky couple a sample of the burgundy.

"I don't know about this . . ." 

"Well, I guess it really all depends on a matter of _taste_." 

The couple looked at one another, then at the sample, not wanting to be thought of as having bad taste, which, after almost three hours with them, she had decided they most definitely did. 

The door opened quietly. Her secretary, the tiny grey-haired Mrs. Salts poked her head in.

"Mrs. Gryphon? There's a phone call for you."

Buffy rose, went to the door. 

"This'll only take a minute."

She left, rolling her eyes at the couple, and grabbed the phone off Mrs. Salts' desk. 

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Gryphon?"

"Yeah." 

"We're calling about your husband."

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
New Sunnydale High School**

". . . you multiply the first x value with the second, and then the first y value with the second, and then – yes, Sara?"

She looked up. "Huh?"

"Can I help you with something, Miss Gryphon?"

She shot her eyes briefly from side to side, then brought them back to attention in the middle of the classroom. "Bathroom?"

She sighed. "Go ahead. Just hurry, please." 

Sara moved her notebook – still closed – to the middle of her desk, grabbed her tiny plastic clutch, and made her way out of the classroom. Entering the hall, she threw back her hair, pulled back her shoulders, and walked confidently down the hall to the bathroom.

She walked in, scoured it with her eyes, then parked in front of the mirror next to a tall auburn-haired girl already busy with lipstick.

"You're late."

"Bite me, Jules."

Julianna Wyndam-Pryce, in a perfect mockery of her mother, rolled her eyes.

"How's the Creature?" 

Sara glared, dropping her mascara brush. "You had better not be talking about my boyfriend."

Julie grinned. "Actually, I meant Miss Reynolds, your _delectable_ Algebra teacher, but . . . how is King of the Jocks?"

"Stephan is fine, thank you."

Julie sheathed the cranberry sword and gave a smile for the mirror. "That reminds me. How's your dad? Is he gonna be okay?"

Sara looked at her, lowering the implement again. "What about my dad?"

Julie shrugged. "I just didn't know how bad it was. It sounded pretty bad . . ." 

She was quiet a moment. "Julie . . . how bad _what_ was?"

She looked confused. "He . . . fell. You did know, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't know. What do you mean, 'he fell'?"

"He was teaching a class, and he got sick or something, and blacked out. An ambulance took him to the hospital . . ."

"When?" She started packing her little purse. 

"About fifteen minutes ago. I thought you would have heard . . ."

She hurried out the door. "Thanks, Jules."

She ran down the hall, past the Math Wing, then up the stairs to the Science Department. She burst in the Chemistry Lab.

". . . the reaction should –"

"Reagan!"

Sara's identical twin dropped her beaker. It shattered in the sink, an ugly grey smoke emerging from it. Startled, she looked a moment at her sister at the door, then turned the water on over the mess. The smoke quickly cleared away.

The Chemistry teacher sighed, wishing desperately he wasn't in need of a nicotine fix. "Another Gryphon. Fantastic. Young lady, have you got business here?"

"I need to talk to my sister," Sara shot at him, rather on the defensive now.

He removed his bifocals and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Just leave, Reagan."

She started to protest.

"Just go, please."

She removed her goggles and apron, folded them delicately over the sink, and followed her twin out of the room.

Sara shut the door behind her little sister.

"Reagan –"

"What the Hell was that about?"

"I –"

"Do you realize how dangerous that was!"

Sara took her sister's arms. "Reagan. Dad's sick."

She looked at her. "What?" 

"Something happened in class. He's at the hospital." 

She was quiet for a long time. Sara tried to take her into an embrace, something to calm her, but she pushed her off.

"Don't." 

"I'm trying to help," she said quietly.

"You're not." She leaned against the wall. "What about Eve?"

She looked at her. "What about Eve?"

"Have you talked to her?"

She shook her head. "No, I thought –"

"We should go do that now, huh?"

She nodded. "Yeah, maybe we should –"

The loudspeaker cut her off. "Would Eve, Sara, and Reagan Gryphon please come to the front office prepared to leave?"

They looked at each other.

"I have to get my bag," Reagan said after a moment.

"Chloe'll get it." 

She nodded absently. "Yeah. I guess so."

Sara offered her hand. She took it, something she normally would not have done. She was worried and tense, and Sara was trying to help.

They walked down to the office. Eve was already down there, standing waiting for them, dark eyes flashing back and forth between the bustling people in the office.

"Hey," she greeted. 

"Hey," Sara echoed.

"Is Mom here?" Reagan asked.

The girl shook her head. She looked uncomfortable. 

The door to the office opened; a short pretty woman with dark hair and a small child cradled in her arms emerged, another trailing her.

"Aunt Mary," Reagan murmured, going to her and taking the toddler from her arms.

The woman smiled. "Hi, guys. Everyone ready to go?" She frowned at the twins. "You don't have any bags."

"I didn't bring one," Sara said, "and a friend of Reagan's is going to pick hers up."

The woman nodded. "all right. Eve, you wanna take Michael in your car, and I'll take the girls in mine?"

Eve shrugged. "Fine." She turned to her ten-year-old brother, behind Mary. "Come on, 'kay? You wanna ride with me?"

He nodded and the two of them left.

Mary looked around. "Come on, crew."

They followed her out. Reagan adjusted the little girl in her arms. "Where's Mom?"

"At the hospital with your father." 

She unlocked her dark green van, slipped in the driver's seat. Sara got in the front, and Reagan maneuvered into the back without waking her little sister.

"I don't have a car seat in here," Mary apologized, starting the car.

"You have two toddlers," Reagan said questioningly.

"I know, but the seats are in the garage. I had the entire back and middle seats out, moving some furniture, and I didn't put the boosters back in when I put in the seats."

"I'll just hold Lexi in my lap," Reagan murmured, pulling the seatbelt around both of them.

"We're going to see Daddy," Lexi murmured, then buried her face in her sister's shirt again.

"That's right," Reagan assured her.

"Everyone buckled?"

After receiving the affirmative, Mary turned, started the car, and backed out of the parking lot in her typical hurried fashion.

"Don't worry, Reagan," Lexi whispered. "You're awake now, and that's good."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "What? Of course I'm awake."

Lexi looked up at her sister, tiny face drawn into a frown. "You don't know, yet."

She shook her head, smiled a little futilely. "Sometimes I don't understand you, Lex."

"But you will." She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them briefly.

Her eyes . . . how . . . ?

Why were her eyes black?

"Soon you'll understand everything," the child whispered, a woman's voice issuing forth from the tiny body.

Reagan watched, gaping, as Lexi cuddled back against her as if nothing had happened.

"What did you say?"

She looked up, with a mask of annoyance. And blue eyes.

"Nothing." 

Reagan frowned and adjusted her little sister on her lap. 

"Are you sure?"

She nodded firmly. "Mm-hmm." And resumed her cuddle.

**Monday, December 11th, 2017   
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Mommy!"

Buffy Gryphon, looking rather worn, smiled wanly and took her four year old daughter into her arms, holding her tight and giving her a kiss on the forehead.

"Hey, sweetheart."

Lexi smiled. Buffy looked up at Mary. "Mary, thank you so much for . . ." she lowered her eyes. "For everything."

The woman smiled. "Sure thing, hon. How's he doin'?"

Buffy closed her eyes, stressed, for a moment, then opened them. They were shining with tears that had yet to fall. "Not real well." Her voice was giving over to emotion.

Mary nodded. After a moment, "Want me to take the kids home?"

The petite blonde shook her head. "No. They need to see their daddy first, know he's okay . . ."

"Where are Michael and Eve?"

"Sitting outside his room, waiting for me to come back."

Mary nodded again, taking it in. "all right." She turned to the twins behind her. "Okay, gang, let's head up there, huh?"

They nodded dully, because it was expected of them, not because they actually had something to add to the conversation. Mary smiled, turned back to Buffy.

"You wanna lead the way?"

She turned and started to go. The others followed.

"What room is he in?" Mary asked, mostly to fill the silence. 

"Three-fourteen."

Buffy stopped at the end of the hall, in front of the harsh steel doors sitting contentedly there. She pressed the thick white plastic button marked with a '' and waited, as it lighted, for the elevator doors to part.

She didn't have to wait long. The chime sounded, the doors opened, revealing the dark cavernous innards of the contraption, and the small band of travelers entered. Buffy bent at the knees, leaned toward the door so Lexi could press the hard candy "3", and the doors closed, the chime sounded again, and they began their ascent. 

The Gothic arrowed hand at the top stopped at three after an eternity encased in two minutes, and the doors opened. Buffy led the way down the hall, stopped in front of 314.

Eve and Michael looked up from the bench they were resting on, not looking any bit the same except for their apparent worry. Michael was tan and blonde, Buffy's coloring, heavily, and most of her looks. His father's figure, though, or the beginnings of it, was hidden under too baggy clothing. He was almost eleven and moving into puberty, awkward and long, loud and an outcast in his family. His parents had fought in the Apocalyptic battles, three members of his family were Slayers, all the women and his father experienced some level of clairvoyance, dreams mostly except for little Lexi, who had something more . . . and then there was Eve. Eighteen, tall and svelte, almost painfully thin, with bone china skin and straight, thick raven hair. Thin, Asian eyes and a tiny mouth, long limbs, hands, fingers. She was adopted, and therefore looked nothing like either parent. Her mother was Jeira, daemon princess, and a friend of Angel's. She was adopted when she was four, taken into the Gryphon's home from one of many foster homes, loved and cherished. She didn't remember her biological mother . . . she'd never met her. But, still half daemon, the constant reminder of the distant parent remained: hot flashes during her menses, and the dark blue power center running down her spine. But she considered the Gryphons her parents, and Angel had always been the only thing she'd had as a father, and she loved him as one, felt for him as one now. She's spoken to the doctors with Buffy, and she was scared. There were half moons bore into her palms from where she'd been clenching her hands.

Both children stood as their mother and her makeshift entourage arrived. Eve made a move to hug her mother, decided better of it, and drew back. Michael didn't. He ran for his mother, hugged her around the waist, nearly upsetting Lexi. Buffy smiled a little and put an arm around him.

"You guys ready to go in?"

They all nodded severely. Buffy gently separated herself from Michael and turned to Mary.

"I . . . can you stay out here and wait? I'll need to . . . talk to him and the doctors, after . . ." 

She nodded. "Of course. Want me to take Lexi?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to take her in with me . . ."

"all right. Give him my love?"

She smiled. "Yeah. I mean . . . you can see him, just . . . there's some things I need to take care of, first . . . you understand?"

"Of course." She turned to Sara. "Let me take your purse."

She handed it to her numbly.

Buffy looked at her children for a moment, very apparently nervous. She was shaking. "Let's . . . let's go in, then."

She opened the door, made sure all of her children were in the tiny room before entering herself, closing the door behind her. All four of them stood in the far corner, away from the bed, a little bit taken aback. Buffy let Lexi on the ground, then went over and knelt by his bed. Lexi scampered to her side.

Angel was lying quietly in bed, oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, the sound of his breathing from it quite pronounced and easily audible. There were three needles in the pit of his left arm, running up to various IV bags and machines. The right wrist was heavily bandaged, from his knuckles halfway up his forearm. A little bit of his chest was visible, and showed several sensors affixed to the flesh. He was beyond pale, trembling and struggling for the little bits of breath the mask was giving him. He smiled when his wife sat next to him, but it didn't reach his eyes. There was too much pain there for anything else.

"Hey," she whispered, placing her hand on top of his bandaged one and giving it a light squeeze. His fingers curled around hers, returning the affection.

"Hey."

His voice was almost nothing, dry and rasping, forced.

"The kids are here to see you," she said quietly, keeping the hushed tone.

He smiled a little more. "I'm quite aware." He looked down to the tiny child eagerly awaiting his attention at the foot of the bed, bouncing and gripping his sheets with small hands. "Hi, Lexi."

She grinned. "Hi, Daddy."

He swung his gaze to the corner by the door where his other four children were waiting, indecisive on their course of action. 

"Aren't you going to come say 'hi'? I'm not contagious, I promise."

No one moved, or said anything. Finally, Michael spoke.

"You don't look real," he whispered, on the verge of tears.

Angel wrinkled his brow. "I don't look real?"

The little boy shook his head, starting to cry, big, fat tears rolling down cheeks that had not yet lost all their baby fat. "You look like something off a movie, you know, those hospital scenes where . . . you're not supposed to be here, in real life . . . my dad . . ."

Angel struggled into a sitting position, removed the mask. Buffy opened her mouth to protest, tried to reaffix the mask to him, but he put one hand up to prevent her from doing either.

"Hey, hey . . ." His son looked up. "This better?"

He sniffled from the sanctuary he'd found in Eve's arms, but said nothing.

"Come here."

He didn't move.

"Come here."

He went, walked guardedly to the edge of the bed and stood at attention there, silent but for his sniffling. Angel slipped an arm around him, pulled him forward a little, and kissed his forehead softly.

"That better?" he repeated, voice still thin and forced.

He nodded a little, moved some out of the embrace. Angel flinched at the gentle movement at his side, then lay back down, slowly, and with his wife's diligent help. Michael stood at the edge of the bed.

"Are you okay?" Angel asked, looking rather concerned.

His son nodded somewhat numbly. Angel smiled a little.

"Good." He closed his eyes briefly. "Good."

"Are you going to die?" Michael asked after a moment, question meek and a bit halted. 

He thought a moment. The silence was dreadful.

"I'm not planning on it," he mused gently.

"Promise not to?" 

Angel smiled, lighting his eyes with it, a little. "Yeah, I promise. Okay?"

He nodded, smiled, and hugged his father again, very briefly.

"That all, young man?"

He thought a second before answering. "What's that for?" he asked, pointing to the faintly blue mask Buffy was desperately trying to reaffix to her husband.

"It's an oxygen mask. Helps me breathe, so I don't have to work for it so hard. There's medicine in it, too. The air, I mean."

"What about these?" Michael lightly touched the needles entering his flesh at the pit of his elbow.

"Those're from IV's. Giving me nutrients, medicine."

"And these?" He let his fingers rest on the shiny plastic disks on his chest.

"Monitoring my vital signals, heartbeat . . . that's that monitor, there," he informed him, pointing to a small black box with jumping neon lines. "And other things, respiration rate, temperature, things like that." 

"That's what those machines are for?"

He nodded. "Very good." After a moment of quiet: "That all?" 

"What happened to your wrist?"

"I blacked out, fell . . . when I did, I hit my wrist on my desk, and it's bruised pretty badly."

"Why's it bandaged up like that? You didn't cut it."

"It's padded, see?" he guided his hand to the padding. "So I don't hit it on anything and bruise it worse."

"Kinda like a cast?"

He smiled. "Kind of like that, yeah."

"You're really okay?"

"I'm gonna be fine, I promise." He looked over to his daughters, still watching from the doorway. "Coming to see me or not? I'm sure some very bad person will be in here shortly wanting to poke me with a needle, and I'd like to see you all before that happens." 

Reagan smiled a little, went over and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Hi, Rags," he murmured, using his pet name for her. 

"Hi."

Buffy successfully reaffixed the mask to Angel just then, kissing his forehead to ease the frown from his face.

"You all right, hon?" he asked, once the annoyance had left his face.

She looked up at him, startled. "Of course I'm all right. I'm . . . worried about you."

He sighed. "Don't be, love. I'm gonna be okay. I promise." 

"You've said that already," she told him, numb. 

"Well, I meant it."

Sara walked quietly over to the bed, deciding it was safe. She stood behind Reagan, waiting, silent.

"Hello, Sara, love."

She smiled. "Hi, Daddy."

"I'm glad you've decided to come join us," he teased.

She blushed a little. "It's just . . ." 

"You don't like hospitals?"

She shook her head, relieved that she didn't have to explain.

"Hmm. Neither does your mother."

Buffy didn't say anything, or even look up. Her eyes were in her lap, on Angel's hand, which she was cradling in hers, massaging the fingers, the only part visible with the gauze.

Angel strained a little to see Eve in the corner, alone.

"Eve, sweetheart?"

She looked up.

"I want to see you, baby. I'm going to have to stay here for a few days, and I'll probably not get another chance to visit with all of you."

"I talked to the doctors," she whispered, on the verge of breaking. "They told me everything."

He sighed, his eyes just pained again. "Honey . . ."

"I'm going to go sit with Aunt Mary," she mumbled, closing the door behind her as she went. Buffy made a move to follow her, but Angel shook his head. "Let her go."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "Why –" 

The door opened again. Buffy stood, thinking it was her daughter come back.

It wasn't.

A tall, light haired man in a white coat entered the room, one hand clasping his clipboard. He glanced down at the papers resting on the small board briefly then closed the door and took another step into the room. 

"Mr. Gryphon? I'm Dr. Hughes, and I'm going to be taking care of you while you're here, all right?"

"It's Angel," he murmured.

The man looked confused, then down at his clipboard. "Pardon?"

"If you're going to be taking care of me while I'm here, I'd prefer to be called Angel." 

He nodded. "Sure. I'm going to take a few readings, all right? Then we're going to give you a sedative, and I'll have a talk with you and your family."

"In that order?" Angel asked dryly while the doctor scribbled the numbers bobbing on the multitude of machines his patient was hooked to.

"Excuse me?"

"You're going to do things in that order?" 

"Um, I suppose so," he answered mindlessly, distracted. 

"Can I have the sedative _after_ you talk to me?" 

The doctor looked up. "What? Oh, yeah, sure."

He turned toward the small bed, clustered with people. "Is this it?" 

"My daughter Eve is in the hallway."

"Maybe we should get her –"

"She said you'd already spoken with her."

"About you? I talked to . . ."

"She's Asian."

He nodded. "Pretty girl? In red?"

Angel nodded.

"Yeah, I spoke to her. She's your daughter?" 

"Yeah."

"I thought she was a friend of the family's . . . she doesn't look –"

"She's adopted."

He nodded aimlessly, as if the information wasn't really important. "all right. So this is everyone, then?"

"I guess so."

"all right . . . um, everyone, I'm Dr. Hughes . . . I'm going to be working with Angel for the next little while . . ."

"How long is that?" Reagan interrupted. 

"Pardon?"

"How long will you be working with him?"

"Well . . . as long as necessary . . ."

"And how long will that be?" she crossed her arms across her chest. 

"Well, it's different with every patient –"

"Give me an estimate. You're a doctor."

Angel turned to look at his little girl. "Reagan, sweetheart, lay off, hmm?"

She didn't say anything further. The doctor regained his pride and answered the question as best he could. "Sometimes these things take weeks, sometimes months, or years. For sure, I'll be seeing your – father, is it? – over the next two or three weeks, at least."

She nodded.

"What's wrong with him?" Sara asked.

"Your father is suffering from –"

"Put it in layman's, please," Angel whispered, suddenly looking very tired, and closing his eyes. "They're children, not surgeons." 

Doctor Hughes nodded, even though Angel was no longer attentive to visual stimulation. "Your father has cancer. To be precise, he's got a brain tumor."

**Fall 2000   
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

_Your mother has . . . the term is low-grade glioma. It's a brain tumor. The clinical name is oligodendroglioma. It's in the left hemisphere of the cerebrum. In your mother's case the tumor seems to have started there. In other words, it hasn't spread from another part of the body . . ._

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

The silence was bitter and brittle. Buffy, who knew, was slammed with hearing it again, for the fourteenth or fifteenth time since she'd come to the hospital. The pain of it was never less . . . it hit her hard in the gut, a wave of gnawing pain and desperate nausea, and then the screaming in her head oh god oh god oh god please let this be wrong let it be a mistake. The children, who had not heard it, were struck cold by it. This wasn't real. This was something out of movies, something that shouldn't be living in their daddy. This wasn't right. This was a joke.

A horrible, tasteless joke, but a joke, nevertheless.

"That . . . he can't . . ." Reagan said suddenly.

Doctor Hughes looked at her. "I know this is difficult for you . . ."

"How the Hell could you know how this feels?" she snapped.

He put his hand on hers, trying to calm her. She drew it back violently. "Don't touch me. Don't fucking touch me," she spit, recoiling further, shaking with shock and anger.

"Watch your mouth," Angel muttered, not opening his eyes, floored into fatigue by the last few minutes.

**Fall 2000  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

_I know this is very difficult, and, uh, because of the nature of your mother's illness . . . unfortunately, things may progress very quickly._

Things? What things? 

Symptoms. There's a fair variety that might present. Loss of vision or appetite, lack of muscle control, uh, mood swings . . . 

But what can we do?

Well, not much, until we determine if the tumor's operable. Which we are working on.

Is there something that I . . . I mean . . . can I help?

Well, there's some literature you might want to look at. If we aren't able to go in surgically, there are a number of new treatments that are very promising. Your mother's prognosis is a lot better today than it would have been only a year ago. Even if the tumor's not operable, she has a real chance.

What's a real chance?

Nearly one out of three patients with this condition does just fine. 

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Buffy rose and took Reagan, held her close to her, stroked her back. The girl, made of stuff tough as nails, like her mother, made of steel like a Slayer was, collapsed against her, shaking hard.

"Sweetheart . . ." she looked down at her daughter in her arms. She could see how hard she was trembling. "Don't cry," she whispered, mistaking the rhythmic spasms for tears.

"I'm not crying," she whispered against her. "I'm just . . ."

"What?"

"I'm so angry."

Buffy raised her brow, shocked by the revelation. With more force than she'd meant, she took the girl by the hand and pulled her outside into the hall, down and through another door. The small chapel, place to pray. Buffy sat in an empty pew – the entire place was empty – in the back and pulled Reagan onto her lap. The girl fell against her like a rag doll, unwilling and unable to move, to make her muscles obey anything.

"Angry? God, why are you angry?"

This was not an emotion she'd considered. A hundred others, sure, all of those had drowned her the past few hours, but anger had not even crossed her mind.

"Why would God do that to him?"

Buffy looked at her incredulously. "What?"

"Why would God punish him?"

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Hey, you're awake."

Angel blinked several times in succession, trying to get the cottony sleep out of his eyes. With the steady flow of sedatives, pain killers, medicines being fed into him, he'd been sleeping off and on, in halted, uncomfortable cycles. He'd been dreaming that way, too, strobing, nonsensical dreams that woke him frightened and confused, fevered sweat clinging to his skin and desperate, unforgiving pain in his head, above his eyes, under the cast and at every point the cold metal entered his skin.

Buffy was still there, sitting next to him, holding his hand like a lifeline, massaging the fingers to reassure . . . well, she meant it to be him, he knew, that's why she was doing it, but her, as well. He could feel the distinct pinpoints of her fingers on his sweaty, bandaged palm, on his fingers, his knuckles. Her touch tickled where the skin at the mouth of the bandage breathed fresh air and her gentle stroking.

"How long have I been out?" He didn't recognize his own voice, and he thought it a blessed miracle that she could. It was almost nothing. Broken, cowering in the corner somewhere, rasping and forced.

Hadn't been like that since Hell.

But that was a different story.

"About three hours," she murmured, keeping voice at a hospital vigil. He did not like that, her talking to him like a terminal illness patient. 

That's what he was, he thought dryly, but he certainly didn't want to be treated that way.

"Kids?"

"They went home with Mary . . . a couple hours ago."

"They okay?"

"They . . . they'll be fine, Angel. They're strong kids, and . . . children bend. They'll be fine."

"What about you?" he asked, knowing the answer in the timbre of her voice, the strict way she was sitting, back unreasonably straight, head bent, hands folded in front of her around his, hands a lotus flower creased in prayer.

"I'll be fine," she lied quietly, knowing perfectly well he was on to her ruse, and knowing, also, that there wasn't a goddamned thing she could do about it. 

"What time is it?" he asked, suddenly wondering what had happened to his watch.

"It's quarter after nine in the evening."

"That late?"

"I'm afraid so." 

"Where's my watch?" He looked down at his hands, felt the fingers with the neighboring digits. "My rings?"

"They took them off when you came in . . . it's policy . . . something to have to do with taking your blood pressure or something . . . I wasn't listening . . . I have them now, if you want them back." 

"I want my wedding ring."

She smiled a little, knowing that was her Angel talking, gently getting back to the person he really was, not all this hospital blues and such.

She slipped the ring off her thumb, placed it on the ring finger of his left hand. "Keeping it warm for you," she whispered, kissing his forehead, as his mouth was currently unavailable.

He smiled a little. "Are you staying the night with me?" he asked, trying not to plead.

She nodded. "Yeah. I'll be right here with you, all night."

He was quiet a moment. "Buffy."

She looked at him, raised her brow a little in anticipation of his question. "Yeah."

"How are you, really?"

She laughed a little, sadly. Her eyes were brimming with pain; they were red-rimmed with old tears. She'd done it when she'd first come in, when they'd first told her . . . that's when she'd cried. 

It was something she had to fall on her knees to do, cry in front of anyone, even him.

He'd held her.

"I'm dying, Angel," she whispered. "I'm not me anymore. I feel every one of those needles in the pit of my arm, I feel the respirator. I feel being helpless like that, breathing through a machine. I feel . . . I feel like I can't breathe, like I shouldn't be allowed, like I need to hold my breath until you're better. I'm part of you . . . we're one. If you die, I will, too." She lowered her eyes, then brought them back up to his, met them. "How the Hell do you think I am?"

He closed his eyes, lay back against his bank of hospital pillows, taking his count to ten, then opening them again, forcing himself up into a sitting position, pain, no pain, slipping the mask off, taking her wrists in his hands and drawing her to him.

"I love you."

He kissed her.

"That doesn't make any of this go away," she lamented, voice nothing. 

"Yes it does," he argued quietly, unable to do anything any other way. "Because it's stronger than that, don't you think?"

"I don't know what to think," she admitted, averting her eyes.

He relinquished one of her wrists, and used the free hand, his battered right, to cup her face in his hand. Kissed her again.

"I've never in my life been this frightened," he told her, whispering against her shell of an ear, letting his body rest against hers. "I died and it didn't hurt like this. But I will be damned if I'm not going to fight it until the last skin of my teeth, do you understand that?"

"God." 

She sobbed, just like that, suddenly, moving to the bed and holding him, letting him hold her, so that the two of them were entwined in some twisted yin yang on the sickly green hospital sheets, her violent tears shaking both of them.

They fell to the sheets, gently, holding one another, still trembling with fear and sorrow and a thousand other nameless emotions.

When the nurse came in for Angel's bihourly check, she found them cuddled and entwined on the tiny bed, warm and relaxed but for gently quivering muscles now and then, for breathing, sound asleep. Moving as one.

**Monday, December 11th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

"I don't want to go to bed," he insisted. "I won't be able to sleep anyway." He gave Mary a half-angry, half-pleading look, and she returned it with a doubtful one.

"Michael, I think the best thing now would be sleep . . . for everyone . . ."

"I'm not tired," he repeated stubbornly. The older woman sighed, not knowing quite how to deal with this kind of thing. How did one comfort a ten-year-old boy that had just found out his father had cancer? Reagan watched silently from the door, unable to intervene, hoping they wouldn't notice her. Not like she had a better idea of what to do . . .

Mary put a hand to her head. "I know this is hard, and the last thing you feel like is a normal schedule, but it'll help, I promise it'll make you feel bet—"

"What's all this?" Eve asked, entering from the opposite door. Her eyes lighted on Reagan, who abruptly found an elsewhere to be—namely, the kitchen. Her twin was standing at the counter, her dark head bent, some kind of food spread before her. She wasn't touching it. Unable to handle _that_ talk at the moment, Reagan slipped into the laundry room and hovered there, uncertain what she was doing. She could hear Eve handling Mary and Michael. Ever the oldest sister, Eve liked to take care of people. Especially Michael . . . maybe because they were so completely different.

"Why don't you come lay down with me? We can watch . . . I have some Simpsons tapes." 

"Are you sure?" Mary asked, her usually brash voice worried.

"Yeah, of course," Eve said, calm, collected. At the hospital she'd been the one telling Buffy to stay. It was so obvious she wanted to; so obvious she needed to be with her husband. Their father.

_"They all need to be home, but . . ."_

"It's okay, you can stay here Mom," Eve had said. "I can handle it. We'll be fine." 

"Xander's got the kids," Mary seconded. "I'll look after things . . . You just stay with Angel."

"If you're sure . . ."

"We'll be fine Mom," Eve said firmly and that was the end of it.

Reagan wasn't fine. She wasn't fine at all. She felt like she was suffocating. There were so many people here, all in pain; all worried . . . She felt like she was drowning in their hurt. Lexi was asleep, thank God, Eve had Michael in hand and Sara . . . Sara would be all right, Reagan told herself. Sara could deal with stuff.

"Reagan!" Mary exclaimed, appearing in the doorway, one hand coming up to her mouth. "You startled me."

"Sorry."

"No . . . no, it's fine. What are you doing in here? Are you okay?" 

"Fine. I'm going to go for a walk . . . patrol a little."

A frown creased Mary's pretty face, a line appearing on her forehead. "You don't have to do that. Sunnydale will survive a night without you." Her tone turned gentle. "Why don't you stay home, we'll make popcorn and watch an old movie or something."

"No, no, I'm just gonna . . . I won't be long, I promise."

Mary's eyes were disapproving, as worried as they had been with Michael, but there was no Eve to stop Reagan from going. Maybe Sara, but she was in the kitchen, not moving. Reagan grabbed her coat off the pegs on the side of the wall and reached for the handle of the back door. 

"Do you have a stake?" Mary asked. Reagan paused, realizing she didn't. No wait, she did. She pulled it out of her boot.

"Never travel without one," she said, aiming at flippancy. It didn't really work. She slipped out before she could say anything more idiotic. Difficult, but not impossible. Outside she breathed a little easier, Slayer instincts taking over as she walked, directly, her feet toward the graveyard, keeping her body alert as her mind wandered . . . shouted . . . screamed . . .

It was impossible. This whole thing was . . . impossible. Not happening to them . . . to her . . . to her father. Why? What had he done? What the fuck could he have done that he deserved this?

Nothing. He hadn't done anything. The father Reagan had grown up with was loving, kind . . . quiet, sure, had a little trouble opening up, but hell, so did she. Before she was born he'd fought the good fight. And now what . . . he got punished for being an exemplary citizen? No. It didn't work like that. He had to have . . . there had to be something . . . an explanation . . .

If there was an explanation maybe Reagan could deal with it. Could understand it. This way . . . it was just this thing . . . this thing she couldn't fight, couldn't do anything about. Her entire life she'd been able to _do_ things and now . . . now her father was dying and there was _nothing_ she could do . . . and she didn't even know why . . .

"Lovely night, isn't it?"

Reagan started, spinning around, her Slayer instincts leaping to the fore. She blinked at the blonde woman standing on the street corner, just outside the cemetery gates. Vampire? Her senses told her no.

"I didn't notice," Reagan muttered, moving to walk by. A hand touched her arm as she passed and she spun to look at the woman again. She was beautiful; all pale blonde hair and pitch black eyes. There was something strange about her eyes . . .

"Don't go, I was waiting for you," the woman said softly.

"Waiting?" 

"I'm so sorry about your father, Reagan."

Her world spun a little, and her muscles tightened, ready to attack . . . but there was no reason to attack . . . her eyes were very dark, and her voice was familiar. She'd heard it before, recently . . . where had she heard it?

"What do you know about it?" she demanded fiercely.

"I used to know your father, a long time ago. It's terrible, really . . . but necessary. He has to be punished for what he did . . . But you already know that, don't you?"

She did of course . . . but punished for _what_? 

"He never . . . he's a good man! He helps people!" Reagan exclaimed, half-pleading, half-defensive.

"Of course he does," the woman replied soothingly. "Of course he does. But helping people doesn't make it go away . . . all the terrible things he did."

"What things?" Reagan whispered.

The stranger's eyes were dark, very dark when she replied . . . more than black . . . a complete absence of anything. "You'll find out soon enough," she promised. 

"What do you mean?" Reagan demanded. "What things? Who are you?"

"I'm Darla," she said. "I'll be around."

There was a sound from the graveyard behind them and Reagan spun to see what it was . . . Nothing. She spun back, and blinked . . . Nothing again. Except Darla . . . Darla had been there. And now she was gone.

Gone, with secrets of her father's past . . . . Terrible things, she'd said . . . . He had to be punished . . . .

Reagan couldn't go home. Not now. Not to see them all . . . answer their questions . . . be comforting or comforted . . . She swung open the gate and stepped into the graveyard.

_He has to be punished for what he did . . ._


	2. Superman and Mr Hyde

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Mm . . ." a slight noise outside her realm of consciousness very slowly drilled down into her perception and brought her gently from sleep. Buffy opened her eyes slowly, looking up, down, around. Angel was asleep under her, lying back a little on his pillows, eyes closed, mask reaffixed, all manner of needles and sensors firmly attached. He was sleeping peacefully, eyes closed, body nicely relaxed, warm and rising and falling gently with each breath. He was fine. She kissed the hollow of his neck softly, then carefully lifted her body up into a sitting position, raising herself up by straightening her forearms, placing all her weight there. She looked around the room.

There was a woman in hospital scrubs, hair balled at the nape of her neck, scrawling notes on her clipboard from Angel's machines.

"Hello?" Buffy asked, her voice choked with sleep and not quite coming all the way.

The woman looked over at her. "I'm sorry . . . did I wake you?"

She shook her mussed head, raising herself the extra little bit into a full sitting position, instead of the half balance on her hands. "Oh, no . . ."

"I'm just here to give him his medication, check all the hook-ups . . . then I'll go."

She checked every sensor and needle where they met his skin, then took a syringe out of her pocket, and a small vial of medication. She checked the serial number on the side, then pressed the point into the top of the vial. She drew up the plunger, filling the tiny glass bottle with translucent liquid. She readied it, checked the amount of liquid against the tiny white dashes on the side, and inserted it into the soft flesh of his left upper arm. Angel moved his head a little, made a little twitch, but otherwise didn't move.

"What medication are you guys giving him?"

"There's vitamins, painkillers in the IVs . . . and that's a sedative we've been giving him directly like that."

"He's already asleep." 

"We have to give it to him on a schedule regardless of whether or not he's awake."

"Oh."

"He's your husband?" the orderly asked, writing a few more things down on her chart.

"Yeah."

"all right, Mrs. Gryphon . . . Doctor Hughes is going to be in here in a few minutes to talk to you about treatments."

"Treatments?"

"Yeah . . . he's gonna discuss how the surgery's gonna go."

"We . . . he's already got the surgery slated? He's got it scheduled?"

"Mm-hmm. You're lucky there's an opening so soon."

Angel stirred a little as the woman began to pull up his blankets.

Buffy wrinkled her brow. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to check the catheter."

"He's not wearing one . . . he wouldn't let them. He said it made him feel like an infant."

She pulled them back up. "Oh. all right. There's a bathroom down the hall. You're gonna have to call a nurse to remove his hookups, then go with him when he goes. Kay?"

"Yeah, sure," she replied absently.

Angel stirred a little more, started to roll onto his side. Buffy gently pushed him back onto his back, as not to upset the hookups. He made a small noise in the back of his throat and tried to turn over the other way. She held him still, hand barely on his chest.

His eyes fluttered opened, dark lashes parting slowly as the door opened. He looked up at his wife, with a slight smile. "Hi," he whispered.

Dr. Hughes entered the room slowly, clipboard in hand. "Mr. Gryphon."

Angel looked up, a little bit confused at all the happenings so soon after waking. "Buffy? What's going on?"

"The doctor's here to talk to you, baby." She took his hand.

"That's right," Dr. Hughes assured him, lowering his voice to something more suitable. "I'm going to talk to you about your treatments, all right?"

"Surgery?" he asked quietly, trying to sit up. Buffy took him into her arms, cradled his body against hers. He settled comfortably into the cavity, eyes squeezing closed briefly in pleasure, then opening again to look up at the doctor.

He nodded. "Yes, surgery. We're going to operate, try to remove the tumor."

"And then I'll be better?"

The doctor grimaced. "I'm gonna be honest with you . . . there's no possible way we can remove all of your tumor."

"No way," he echoed dully.

"Mrs. Gryphon –"

"Buffy."

"Buffy," the doctor continued. "Do me something?"

"Sure."

"Make a fist."

She wrinkled her brow and made a fist.

"Tuck your thumb in."

She did.

"Put your fist in your husband's hand."

She did. He squeezed it lightly. 

"That, Mr. Gryphon, is roughly the size of your tumor." 

He didn't say anything.

"Did . . . did you hear me, Mr. Gryphon?" he asked gently.

"We're just lucky you've got small hands, love," he said dryly, an attempt at humor. A failed attempt.

Buffy swallowed roughly. "That . . . that big?"

"Roughly."

She lowered her eyes, brought them down to her husband. He seemed to be taking the news fairly well, but she knew him well enough to know that he was breaking on the inside.

"But you can remove most of it, right?" she asked, the icy fingers of panic beginning to spread throughout her.

"Almost all of it. There's a little bit, though, that's in a very sensitive part of the brain . . . if we tried to remove it, the most likely outcome would be Angel losing all motor skills."

Angel reacted to this, tightening his hands into balls, squeezing her hand, balling the sheets in his fist. 

"You . . . that . . ." Buffy faltered. "That isn't a good option."

"I really agree," Doctor Hughes said dryly. "So we'll remove the majority of it, then we'll try to get rid of the rest through chemical and/or radiation therapy." 

"Like chemo?" Buffy asked meekly.

He nodded. "Yes. Like chemo. It really depends on how much of the tumor's left, how dense it is, things like that."

She nodded numbly. "Yeah." Angel hadn't said anything; she looked down at him to see if he was all right. "Angel?"

He looked up, startled, as if broken from sleep. "Yeah . . . ?"

"You okay, love?"

"I'm fine," he replied quietly, not meeting her eyes. Absently. Oh, you could lose all motor skills. Oh, we're talking about surgery: hospitals and anesthetics and surgeons. No sweat.

Remember, darling – I'm Superman. 

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
The Gryphon's Home**

"Don't go."

Reagan stared at her twin, eyes a bit wild, distraught. "I have to go."

Sara's mouth firmed in disapproval and worry. "Reagan, you don't have to. Your classes will survive without you—"

"And so will all of you," Reagan interrupted. "I want to go. I'm going."

"Please?" Sara pleaded, changing tactics, imploring Reagan with her own eyes. The younger twin stuffed her binder into her book bag and slung it firmly over her shoulder, trying to ignore Sara's look . . . . It didn't really work. She paused in the doorway of her bedroom and turned back, sighing.

"I have to go. I can't . . . I can't be here right now. It'll distract me." She dared a look up at her twin. Understanding was creeping into Sara's eyes. The older girl was like her mother, taking comfort from family . . . those she loved. Reagan couldn't . . . she needed to be away, be working, be patrolling . . . be doing something. She couldn't make brownies . . . what their father always made them when they were sick . . . and watch TV and talk about it . . . . She couldn't talk about it.

"I'm going," she repeated.

"Come back soon?" Sara asked after a moment.

"I have dance after school . . . I might skip it. I'll see." Sara was silent and Reagan slipped out of her bedroom, hurrying down the stairs before anyone else could try and stop her. Mary was near the door.

"You don't have to go to school," she said. Reagan stifled a sigh.

"I know, Aunt Mary. I just . . . want to. I'll call," she promised.

"If you're sure," Mary replied doubtfully, glancing towards the kitchen where Eve and Michael had been since waking up at four in the morning. They were making their fourth pot of hot chocolate.

"I am. Bye." Reagan escaped . . . through the front door this time. What was she escaping from? Admitting that she was frightened? That she hated all of this? They all did . . . . Admitting that she knew there was a reason? That woman . . . Darla . . . who was she? What did she know about her father?

What had he done?

She wasn't escaping, Reagan reminded herself as she climbed into her car. She was just distracting herself . . . losing herself in work. There was nothing wrong with that.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
New Sunnydale High School**

"Reagan!" So much for not having to talk . . . Chloe was across the hall in seconds, a small blonde streak. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?" 

No? Reagan didn't say a word; somehow knowing whatever she said would be hopelessly inadequate. Chloe understood . . . they'd been best friends for sixteen years, there wasn't much Chloe didn't understand about Reagan. "Come on, let's go sit down, there's a few minutes until first." Reagan followed obediently, letting Chloe take her arm and draw her towards the Commons. The halls were crowded . . . dense, packed, hundreds of lives and problems and eyes, staring . . . watching . . . Her father wasn't at school today, there'd be a sub. People would ask questions . . . Was he okay? What was going on? Where was Sara? Was he sick? Was he hurt? Was he going to die?

What had he done?

"Reagan?" Chloe said gently, startling her back into reality . . . or as close as she could get at the moment. She sank into one of the couches, looking around the lounge area, to the students at tables, at the other chairs, laughing, talking, staring . . . were they staring? "Uncle Xander came over last night and told us what happened. I . . . Is he okay?"

"I don't know," Reagan said. No, of course he wasn't okay. He had a brain tumor. He wasn't okay.

"Do you know about treatment yet?" Chloe asked gently. Reagan shook her head numbly.

"They were going to talk about it today . . . I couldn't . . . be home." 

Chloe's eyes were bright and sympathetic, hurting too. She'd known Angel since birth, this had to be hard on her too. Hard on everyone. "I understand. Do you not want to talk about it?" 

"Not really."

There was a moment of awkward silence, as Chloe grasped for another topic. Reagan didn't even try. Had she really thought it would be better to be here? Well, class hadn't started yet. When she started working it would be all right. She'd be distracted. Not sitting here waiting for Chloe to think of something to say.

"Oh! We might have a gig at this LA club!" Chloe exclaimed. "Scott's cousin brought a friend who knows the owner and they want us!" She paused, her face falling slightly. "But um, if you're busy, that's fine . . . we can postpone it until things are . . ."

"That's great," Reagan said. To sing. To just let all of this crap run out of her, to melt into the music and forget this . . . forget all of it . . . She didn't even know if she'd be able to. If she'd walk up on that stage and think _He's going to die. He's never going to hear me sing again. What did he do?_ and stand there frozen, staring at the crowd.

The bell rang. "Let me walk you to class," Chloe said, standing up. Reagan followed automatically. They _were_ staring, she could feel it . . . . Everyone was watching. _What did he do?_

Reagan hardly watched where she walked. Chloe had to pull her out of near-collisions a few times. Reagan didn't want to look up, she was afraid she'd see their eyes, wondering, accusing, pitying . . . there were too many people here. Chloe made a little exclamation as they reached Reagan's classroom, and her head came up to see who was waiting by the door. He straightened when he saw her, hurried over . . .

"I didn't know if you'd come," he murmured, catching her up in his arms gently, one arm twining around her waist, the other cradling her neck, the line of her jaw. She wanted to run from the worry in his eyes . . . and stay right where she was forever and ever . . . just bury her face in his shoulder and forget there was anything else in the world.

_I had to . . . _she thought, but didn't say anything. Just stood there. Let him hold onto her. It was like an anchor, something that made sense . . . Except in a moment he was going to ask questions, and then she'd have to think again, have to remember . . . No more anchor. Just another place to drift.

The second bell rang and Reagan found herself pulling away, out of his arms . . . losing the sense of his touch. "You have to go to class," she said, her head turning to the door of her classroom, away from him. _Don't look. If you don't look, you can walk away . . ._

"Reagan . . ."

She looked. She couldn't help it. His hazel eyes looked darker than usual. Worried. She didn't know what hers looked like, except he let go of her hand. She slipped inside and paused just inside the doorway. When she looked back out, he was gone.

"Reagan!" another voice exclaimed and she turned. They were saying her name more than usual . . . everyone kept saying her name . . . like she didn't know it anymore, or they were trying not to forget. It was her teacher, Mrs. Engstrom. "Are you all right dear? How's your father?"

The whole class was turning to look, to listen . . .

"Fine," Reagan mumbled. "We're fine." Engstrom looked sympathetic, pitying . . . more pity . . .

"You didn't have to come, you know . . . It's perfectly understandable if you'd rather be home right now . . ."

"No!" Reagan exclaimed . . . paused . . . "No, I'd rather be here. Can I sit down?"

"Of course! . . . Of course." Reagan slipped into a chair and stared at her desk and tried to pretend they weren't staring, but they all were . . . And the one time she looked up the pair of eyes she saw was black, all black and she couldn't look back down quickly enough to escape the sight . . .

"Reagan!" 

Everyone kept saying her name . . . . Lunch, and they were still saying her name. Hadn't they said it enough by now?

She looked up blankly and saw Julianna hurrying towards her, tray in hand. Sara's best friend . . . had the Wyndam-Pryces been to the hospital yet? Did they know more about it than Reagan did, voluntarily stuck at school, avoiding information, exposure . . . 

"How are you?" Julianna asked. They kept asking that too. As if she had an answer. As if she was going to smile at them and say, _Great, thanks for asking . . ._ Maybe they expected her to burst into tears . . . maybe that would reassure them . . . "Is Sara here?" Julianna hurried on.

That one Reagan could answer. She shook her head, eyes darting past Julianna, through the cafeteria. Chloe was headed that way, barreling through the cafeteria, trampling freshman in her path . . . Freshman that were watching her . . . Like the sophomores, like the juniors, like the seniors in her father's English class . . . They were all watching her . . . It was getting dizzying.

"Do you think I should call her?" Julianna asked anxiously. Reagan blinked, taking a moment to adjust to the new side of her sister's friend . . . always beautiful, confident to the point of bitchiness . . . she'd never seen her anxious before . . . Not that she'd ever felt like this herself before . . . like she was swimming, just on the edge of drowning . . .

"She'd probably like that," Reagan replied, grasping for words. Chloe was almost there. Her eyes slid past her best friend, to another blonde head against the cafeteria . . . There was something familiar about the slender figure, clad in black . . . Something tugging at the edge of her mind, a name, or a voice, or words . . . The girl turned and Reagan saw her face, heard the words her lips formed as if she were right beside her, not across a crowded, noisy cafeteria full of people that were watching her . . . _He has to be punished for what he did . . . You know that. There's nothing you can do dear. He has to be punished . . ._

"Reagan?" Julianna's voice asked as if she were the one that was far away. A hand shook her arm and Reagan turned, dizzy, out-of-place to see Chloe.

"What is it?" her best friend asked. Reagan licked dry lips, trying to figure out which way the nearest door was . . . what was her right, what was her left . . . why Darla had been in the cafeteria . . . 

"I have to get out of here," her voice said, and Reagan found herself stumbling away, away, anywhere where no one would watch her . . .

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017   
The Magic Box**

The small magic store was quiet, tranquil, imbued with the spirit of the man that had owned it for seventeen years. Giles sat behind the counter, trying to read, and for once failing miserably at it. He took off his glasses, laid them on the counter, rubbed at his forehead as if it would rid him of worry, of heartache for his almost-daughter and her beloved family. 

Reagan watched through the window, knowing all too well what he was feeling at the moment. She took a deep breath and pushed open the door of the shop, the tinkle of the door bell revealing her presence. Giles looked up quickly, slipping off his stool, ready to help a customer, counsel using this herb or that one, this incantation or the other . . . . He paused when he saw it was her, and she stood still just inside the door, watching him.

He didn't try to walk over to her, didn't try to touch her; didn't ask if she was all right. She blessed him for that.

"Can I train?" she asked, nodding towards the back room. Since Sara and she had been little the training room had been a place of safety, of play, give-and-take, a world of it's own, where they were the strongest things in it. Nothing could hurt her there but herself. The bruises and sprains of childhood had mostly come in that room, learning to fight, learning to take care of herself. Learning to take care of the entire world.

"Go right ahead," Giles said softly, nodding toward the door. He paused as Reagan didn't move, too busy watching him, wondering if he was going to turn out to be just like everyone else too. After a moment he asked gently, "Is there anything I can do?"

Reagan let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She shook her head quickly. There wasn't anything anyone could do . . . not even her . . . especially not her . . .

_Don't think about that . . . don't think about that . . ._

Giles put his glasses back on and went back to reading. Ignoring her. Thank God.

Reagan escaped to the training room. They'd expanded it three years before, so all three Slayers could work at once, but besides that it was basically the same as it had been when Giles bought the magic shop. Mats covered the floors, two punching bags were suspended near one wall, shelves held a variety of weapons, a bar at the side of the room even let Reagan practice her ballet.

She stripped to a tank top and jeans, pulled her hair into a pony-tail, did her stretches without thought. It was soothing . . . mindless, numbing, superbly routine. Legs stretched, touch the toe, hold. Arm over the head, hold. Leg up on the bar, bend over, hold. Her mind emptied, all the scrutiny draining from her vision, until she saw nothing but the white room around her. No more staring eyes. No more furrowed brows. Just Reagan and the room . . .

Once she was warmed up she turned to the punching bag. THUNK, went her fist against the heavy leather. Arm back. THUNK. Other arm. THUNK.

Her father. THUNK.

Her mother. THUNK.

Darla. THUNK.

Lexi. THUNK.

Her father. THUNK.

A tumor. THUNK. 

Hospitals. THUNK.

Her siblings. Left-right-left. THUNK TH-THUNK.

Her _father_. THUNK.

Reagan kept punching, until her arms lost their Slayer strength, never noticing the tears streaming down her face, or the man in the doorway, watching her with concerned eyes.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

Darla sat cross-legged on the colored rug in the Gryphons' playroom, pale knees peeking out from under the dark hem of her skirt. Feminine fingers with long, dark nails played idly with a few scattered toys. Feeling the smooth, cool plastic. She was wearing her sunglasses again . . . she liked them. They were indeed tapered and trendy and fit her face well. She had her hair down, but short, straight, very blonde. Fell in her face, in front of those chic sunglasses. She had on a short black and grey plaid Catholic schoolgirl's skirt, bare legs and black, leather strap sandals, cool, fashionable little Italian heels. White man's dress shirt, tailored tight around her, making her more feminine instead of the obvious inverse. It was rolled up at the sleeves, balled at the soft pit of her elbow. She was wearing a silver cross around her neck.

She was waiting. 

"Lexi . . ."

The little girl didn't look up. "Hand me a green block. The four dot kind."

Darla wrinkled her brow. "What?"

"The kind with four dots on the top."

Dumbly, she handed her the Lego. Lexi added it to her ever growing little tower.

"Lexi," Darla tried, crawling over to her, beside the little castle, under construction, as of yet. "I want to talk to you."

"Okay," Lexi said agreeably, placing a red block firmly to the top tier of her masterpiece. She looked up.

"I want to talk to you about your daddy."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry that he's sick," she whispered.

"No, you're not," Lexi said dully. "You made him that way."

Darla blanked, looked at the little girl in surprise. "I . . . I don't know what you mean," she stuttered when she'd recovered a little.

"Yes, you do," Lexi said in the same matter-of-fact tone.

The woman frowned, decided to change her tactics. "It's necessary –" 

"What for?"

"He has to be punished. For what he's done."

The little girl looked at her.

"You know about that, don't you?" Darla asked sweetly.

"Yes," Lexi stated, still blunt.

"He has to be punished for –" 

"For when he was Bad?" she asked, nonchalant.

Darla smiled. "Clever girl. Yes. For when he was Bad."

"No," Lexi told her, straightforward. "He's paid his penance."

"He hasn't, he –"

"He made up for his sins. The Powers forgave him. God forgave him," she said, looking down at her little hands. She raised her eyes, met Darla's, taking the sunglasses to reveal the black orbs. "Now you have to forgive him." She placed the glasses in the woman's hand, folding her delicate, feminine fingers around the plastic rims.

She went back to her blocks. 

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Superman was fast asleep again by the time Wesley and Cordelia Wyndam-Pryce got there to see him. Buffy, however, was sitting quite awake beside him on his tiny hospital bed, reading the glossy, brightly colored pamphlet on cancer treatments the doctor had given her. Immersed, she didn't notice the visitors until they were already inside the room and beside the bed.

"Hey," Cordelia murmured, sitting beside the tiny blonde, careful not to upset her sleeping friend.

The Slayer lowered the pamphlet to the flat of her stomach and looked up. "Hey."

"How is he?" Wesley asked, peering at the machines in the corner of the room.

"He's not getting any worse," Buffy murmured, eyes flashing down at the leaflet, her husband, the machines, Angel again, then back to Wesley. "But for that matter, he's not exactly getting better, either. The doctors brought us pictures of the . . . of the tumor." She hadn't said it until then, and it stung her. Tumor. What a horrendously ugly word. It didn't fit well on the tongue, and suddenly her mouth was filled with a bad tasting sticky dryness that she couldn't seem to shake.

Goddamn cruel laws of fate.

"Pictures . . . x-rays. They're on the table, if you want to see them."

Wesley picked up the stack of glossy black papered photos. He frowned. "That's the shadow, there?" he asked delicately.

"Yeah," she replied numbly. "That's it."

"So . . . are they going to operate?" Cordelia asked, trying to be something other than in pain.

"Yeah. Day after tomorrow."

"And how long will he be in the hospital after that?"

"About a week. They said he can probably go home a week, eight days after . . . afterwards they're going to do a chemo, just to test his body's reaction to it . . . two weeks from yesterday."

"That's Christmas," Wesley whispered.

"Yeah," she murmured. "One Hell of a present, huh?"

"Are they sure they're going to have to go ahead with the chemo?"

"Yeah, it's pretty much a given. There's no way they can remove all of it . . . and there's always the possibility that there will be . . . more . . . growth . . . afterwards . . ."

"God," Cordelia whispered.

"Yeah."

"Did . . . do the kids know?" Cordelia asked.

"We . . . told them about the cancer, last night. We haven't talked about surgery, yet. Angel and I just found out about two hours ago."

"How'd he take it?"

"Pretty well. But you know how he is. Quiet. He didn't say anything about it."

"Of course he wouldn't," Cordelia murmured.

"No."

"Where are the kids? School?"

"Um . . . I called Mary this morning. She said everyone was staying home . . . everyone but Reagan. She said that Reagan thought being at school, getting into the regular schedule, would help her . . . God, she and Angel are so much alike. He'll have a problem, something he's not able to solve, something he can't touch, and he'll go patrol, he'll go into his study and do Tai Chi, the discipline of those things, taking his mind off . . . off whatever . . ." she started drifting off, getting quiet, hit again with how much it _hurt_.

It hurt like Hell, and then some.

Cordelia put her hand on her friend's arm. "Maybe we should call them and tell them about the surgery?" 

"God, I can't do that over the phone!"

"I . . . I didn't mean . . . I was just trying to help."

"I'm so fucked up, Cordelia. I can't do this. I . . . I'm not nearly this strong."

"You've . . . you've gone through everything! I mean, you two have been apart, been fighting . . . he went to Hell and you lived through it . . ."

"Cordelia, I love him more every day. We've known each other for twenty two years, been married for seventeen. I can't live without him, now. I'm way past that."

"What about your kids? You just can't fall apart right now," Wesley intervened. "You can't expect _them_ to be strong right now, seeing how hard it is for you. They're children, and they're having their world shatter, or start to."

"It isn't fair," she whispered, lying down on the bed, crawling next to him, cuddling beside him, taking his hand in hers.

"Life isn't fair."

"Don't tell me that, Wesley."

"I know it probably isn't what you want to hear right now . . ."

"You're damn right it isn't what I want to hear right now. I've been hearing it my whole life. For once, it ought to be unfair in my favor."

"I'm afraid it doesn't work like that."

"It should," she grumbled, burying her face in the pillows.

"Be that as it may, the fact remains that it _doesn't_. And there's nothing you can do about it, except accept it, and move on."

"That's easy for you to say."

"Buffy –"

"Bite me, Britain."

"You're not being very open to this . . ." 

"I've spent my whole life fighting. I'm tired of doing it."

"I understand that."

"You don't," she whimpered.

He sighed and sat beside the two girls on the bed, putting his hand on his friend's back. "Maybe not. But maybe I could. If you'd help show me."

"No."

He sighed again. "Then I can't help you."

"I don't need help. I need a fucking miracle."

"I'm not really in that business."

"I know," she lamented into her pillows. "No one seems to be in that business anymore."

"Guys?" Cordelia asked, shaking a little. Buffy didn't look up; Wesley, after living with Cordelia as long as he had, recognized her trembling and her expression for what it was, and caught her in time enough that he could hold her the duration of the Vision. She moaned; Buffy pulled herself into a sitting position and Angel, still sleeping, made a similar noise and fussed a little in his sleep, muscles tightening quickly then relaxing again, leaving him sleeping peaceful as if nothing had happened.

"Cordelia?" Buffy whispered, worried.

The woman held her head, moaned again. "Oh, God . . ."

"What did you see?" Wesley asked quietly.

"They . . ." she gasped for air, still panting from pain and loss of air. "Three . . . things . . . ugh, they . . . couldn't have been human, there's . . . there's no way . . . they . . ." she took a short moment of silence, holding her throbbing head in both hands. Wesley adjusted her on his lap, supporting her at the waist, hugging her to him. "They looked kinda . . . made of . . . something, God, they . . . no eyes . . . but they had . . . symbols, runes, something instead . . . sewn on . . . instead . . ."

Wesley stroked her back as she quieted. Buffy wrinkled her brow, concerned, and looked down at Angel beside her.

He was still, motionless but for the gentle rise and fall of his chest.


	3. I Could Not Forsee This Thing Happening

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

Reagan began the walk home, not feeling better, not distracted by her hollow endeavors or cleansed by her own tears.

Not that she was any worse.

_That_ would be something, to deepen the gnawing pain; the only way to imbue the hurt would be to make it actually tangible, false smiling black-eyed demon on her shoulder.

Black eyes.

She stopped, paused, looked around.

Goddamn. She'd walked by the cemetery, not even realizing she had altered her course to swing that far from her usual route.

Of course, she knew why.

Darla. She was looking for her, looking for answers. For _something_. Answers. Reasons. Ways to slay her nearly concrete demon.

But she wasn't there. There was no one there. No one but her, and her hurt.

She sighed and shook her head, shoved her hands further into the depths of her jacket pockets, headed home, dark head bent. She cursed herself quietly for not paying attention. She had a mile walk home now, with her books and dance clothes. That was just carelessness . . . forgetting to look . . . forgetting to let reality touch her even for a second . . . . she couldn't afford that.

Goddamn ghosts.

The worst part of this, she reasoned, aggravation growing steadily in exponential bursts, was not that she'd have a longer trek . . . that was fine, it would be good for her . . . but that there would be a longer stretch of quiet on the way there. More time to think.

To brood.

_No,_ she thought angrily. _I'm so fucking over feeling that way._

She pushed it from her mind. Or tried. It lingered at the edge of her being, snapping its vicious jaws as she tried to reclaim her sanity.

Oh, all right. LA. She was going to LA. To sing. That would be a wonderful release.

Maybe.

Maybe if she could focus on that, just that, everything else would fall away.

"Not bloody likely," she lamented. "Not bloody likely."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
The Gryphon's Home**

Darla sat beside the little Lego castle Lexi had nearly completed, watching her carefully. The girl had just _left_. That wasn't how it was supposed to work.

And she was pissed.

"You know what he's done, Lexi. He was the Plague of Europe. A hundred years, brutally murdering innocents. Woman, children . . . he bathed in their blood, again, and again . . ."

Lexi hummed quietly to herself, adding blocks to lacking parts of the building.

"Other creatures, they kill for food . . . your father, he reveled in the hunt. He killed for pleasure."

"Hmm-hmm-hmmm . . ."

"For the sheer joy of doing it, the lust for the kill . . ."

"Hmm-hhhmmmmm . . ."

"Even most demons don't get off on the kill, actually find it sexually satisfying . . . but your father . . . wet dreams of the murders he'd committed, _years_ after he'd done them . . ."

Lexi paid no attention to her, playing with her blocks and singing to herself.

"LISTEN TO ME, GODDAMMIT."

The little girl didn't turn around. Enraged, Darla stood, made a move to go over to the child and capture her attention by force.

Instead, she dissipated as Reagan entered the room.

"Lexi? Were you talking to somebody?"

"She was talking to me," she murmured.

Reagan wrinkled her brow and crouched next to her little sister. "Who?"

Lexi looked at her sister for a long moment, then shook her head. "No, you don't know, do you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're home early," Lexi said, going back to her blocks.

Reagan didn't notice the change in subject. "Oh . . . yeah. I . . . I just was having a little bit of trouble dealing, is all."

"You went to see Mr. Giles?"

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "Yeah."

"He didn't help," she whispered. Her eyes flashed dark. "Because no one can."

And then kitten's blue.

Reagan looked at her with wide eyes. That was the voice again. That woman's voice she'd heard before but couldn't place, the one Lexi had spoken with in the car.

"What did you say?"

"I said 'He didn't help.'"

"No, not –" she stopped. It was useless.

Surreal. This was all too fucking surreal.

"Are you going to dance today?" Lexi asked, placing a small, orange, plastic giraffe on top of her castle.

"I . . . I don't think so."

"You should go." She put a hard candy red pony directly opposite of it. "You like to dance."

"That's true," she whispered. "I do."

"Daddy loves to watch you dance," Lexi said quietly. "And sing."

"Yeah?"

"You're like him."

Reagan shook her head. This wasn't right. This didn't fit into the way the world worked. Four year old girls did not tell you things that profound. For that matter, the need for guidance shouldn't ever come up. It wasn't fair.

The world was severely _fucked_.

"What do you mean?"

"You're kindred."

"Kindred."

She nodded. "Yeah. Kindred." She looked at her. "Deep, like him." She wrinkled her tiny brow and, relinquishing the tiny toy clutched in her small hand, placed pinpoint fingers on Reagan's breastbone. "Old souls."

She felt like she was going to cry again. "I don't understand," she whispered.

Lexi sighed, clearly aggravated, in such a manner that Reagan associated with someone explaining something to a small child who clearly does not understand what's going on.

"You will," she whispered. Her eyes flickered, inky again. "And it'll hurt like Hell."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

Eve sighed and lowered her eyes from her canvas, down to her long, pretty hands. Or they usually were. Pretty. Now would be an exception, covered with paint and charcoal – that was usual – and shaking like they were being rocked by their own personal fault. Her eyes hurt, her head hurt. Her hands really hurt. And there was some sick feeling in her stomach from the hurt of today, of yesterday. So much hurt stuffed into only a few hours.

The painting wasn't working, mirroring her attempts at calm perfectly. She squirted turpentine onto it, watched the colors run down it in heavy trickles. Dripping their heavy drips occasionally, but mostly coursing down the heavily textured material in thick streams.

Eve put the bottle of turpentine down on her desk, looked at the ruin of her painting. Crumpled to her knees, holding her head in her painted hands. She wept.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

Reagan swiveled on her left leg and brought the right up into her attacker's chest in a hard axe kick, coming off the left and landing neatly on the right as she followed-through. The demon stumbled back, knees buckling and heavy body following as he doubled backwards over a crumbling tombstone. She rushed over to him, stake clenched in her cold hand, straddled him, preparing for the kill. Moments before she could do so, however, she was thrown off, into a white granite angel.

The irony did not escape her, and the image brought a pain to her stomach.

The next pain to her stomach came from her attacker, as he dug his boot into the soft, pale flesh there. Reagan made an ugly noise in the back of her throat and struggled to reach her hands and knees, while still clutching her weapon in one hand. Breathing hard, she reached the position only to be floored again by another kick to the gut. More frustrated than hurt; she swallowed the roughness in the back of her throat and came to her feet, knees weak and almost buckling. She raised the hand with the weapon, but before she could bring it down all the way, he grabbed her tiny wrist, pulled her forward, tugging her small, pretty body into his earth-covered, square shouldered carcass.

It took her only fractions of a second to realize that she couldn't move.

_Oh, God,_ she prayed silently. _Not like this. Please, not like this._

Newly risen, the vampire smelled like freshly broken earth, and the dirt and dark were present to the extent where she couldn't discern any definition in his facial features, just the general form of his nose, the bright spots of his eyes and the cavernous opening of his mouth. It was like being attacked by a jack-o-lantern, which would have been, under any other circumstance, hilarious. Right now, though, with her body between . . . not a rock and a hard place, but a hard place and a grinning demon, which was much worse . . . it was far from funny.

She struggled. He was playing with her; he wanted to see her writhe in his grasp, he wanted to see her cry. He would not have the pleasure of the latter.

_If you're cornered . . . without a weapon, without a friend . . . without hope . . . what is left?_ She'd heard it a thousand times, from both of her parents, during training, during counseling, during troubles and tantrums. _What is left? Me._

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

Sara Gryphon sighed, shut her eyes and closed her hands tight around her quilt, bunching the blankets in her white-knuckled fists. She could hear Eve crying downstairs, building up, peaking, becoming the culmination of everything, angst, pain, worry.

Reagan was in her room next door; Sara could hear her, her music was on, something bluesy and heavy with bass, something her twin could not fathom her being able to listen to, so dripping with emotion and hurt. They weren't anything alike, though, that was for goddamned sure. The music was killing her.

They looked the same, sure. Dark hair and eyes, ivory skin, delicate finely arched bone work, svelte, pretty. That was the same, though they didn't wear it alike.

She wore her make-up, her clothes, in pastels, Crayolas, all sorts of airy hues . . . today she was wearing rose colored shadow, blushing lipstick. She liked purples and blues, pinks, in shadow, wore clothes in the same colors. That was important to her, appearance. She dressed carefully, tastefully, thoughtfully selected jewelry, no markings, piercings but the pinpricks in the lobe of each ear.

Reagan was different. She wore dark eyeliner, deeply colored mascara. Lipstick in varying shades of brown. Except when she sang. Then she wore a deep burgundy; she'd been told that her eyes commanded attention, her skin, her body, her hair . . . but she was a singer, so her lips should. So she went dark. Reagan wore dark clothes, had a fondness for velvet and leather and denim, and a particular affection for period dress, corsets and bodices. She had four holes running up the side of each ear, and a tiny ring in the left nostril of her tiny rounding nose. She had a small, intricate tattoo of a blooming white magnolia flowering at the small of her back, their parents' sixteenth birthday present to her.

Reagan was different from her, further than that, further than skin depth. She was younger, but didn't act it, always self-possessed and analytical, thought far more than she talked, engaged mostly in pursuits of the mind, or pursuits of chi, connection the mind, the body, the soul. When they were small, just learning to talk, heritage had been very important to their father, and he'd started teaching them Gaelic along with English, so they'd always have that little reminder of where they came from, so when they traveled to Ireland – and they did, nearly every other summer – they could speak the language, know the culture, feel at home. Reagan had done well with it, just as she had with English, and now spoke five languages fluently . . . . Sara had only caught on to a little bit of the highly difficult Gaelic, a little bit of Spanish and a few phrases in French, though she spoke English well. When they'd started training, Reagan immediately caught onto the older styles of fighting, the ancient exercises in discipline, yoga, tai chi, karate . . . Sara relied mostly on instinct and struggled with the discipline, the structure of training, just like her mother did. Sara remembered when she was younger, seven, maybe, watching her mother and father training together. Angel had been very sure of himself, very self-possessed, focused, going through the slow stretches and bends of the tai chi he nearly doted on . . . Buffy had kept her eyes glued to him, copying his movements a spit second after he did them, her movements as jerky and shaky as his were fluid and relaxed.

That's the way she herself was.

But she was still a fantastic warrior, just like her mother. Unlike during the demanding drills, exercises, in open battle they were fantastically strong and graceful, brute force, willpower and razor sharp instinct crafting them into deadly warriors who could dispatch a demon without breaking a nail. On the Council's first serious review of them – they'd been coming every two years since they were six, but had only started severe evaluations when they were twelve – they had done an exercise where they had to fight off an attacker blindfolded, with verbal instruction. Reagan had done very well, having good reflexes and skill, not to mention the reassurance of the commands; but Sara hadn't understood the Japanese orders, having not been able to grasp any of the Eastern languages her father had attempted to teach her. First she panicked, but then she let instinct take over and had completed the drill with flying colors. And flying attacker, leaving the poor Council member chosen for the job rather bruised.

People told Reagan she was like her father. That was true. Just to the extent that Sara was like her mother. They were both flirty, physical, fun people who liked parties and exercise – Sara was on the track team and co-captain of the school's cheerleading squad, not to mention one of the sophomore class's favorite people – but both understood the other half of their life, their duty to the world. And did everything to protect it, and the people they loved.

The people they loved.

That was one of the worst things about her father's illness . . . like her mother, in times of upset, in times of turmoil and trouble, she turned to her family, the people she was close to and who she loved, who loved her.

And now it was getting harder to do that, which had begun unraveling her world.

_some days are too bright/  
and they just go on/   
but in the moonlight/  
i see everything/_

God. That was just about enough for her. Sara rose from her bed, wiped the corners of her eyes clear of the dewy tears that had pooled there, and walked out of her room. She stood in front of the door to Reagan's room for a long time before gathering up the strength, the courage, to knock. She couldn't stand the music, but she didn't want to make Reagan feel any worse than she already did. Sara loved her father dearly, but she didn't have the same connection with him that her twin did. The way Reagan was acting, she was worried about her, and didn't want to make things worse.

_wish i could keep this beautiful moonlight/  
i really see now/  
so this is happy/  
cuz i'm a sad girl/  
some say a blue girl/_

No one answered, and Sara didn't hear anything from within, except the music. She waited a long moment, then, thinking Reagan might have fallen asleep, she very quietly opened the door and stepped into the room.

_wanna be a new girl/  
is that so bad/  
can't find a man in my sad condition/  
wanna be a new girl/  
wanna be unblue/_

Reagan wasn't there. Nowhere to be seen. But on her bed, sitting quietly, playing idly with a black rose, was a small, shapely blonde woman with inky eyes. When Sara stepped in, she smiled.

"Hi Sara," she murmured in a silky tone. "I've been waiting for you. I'm Darla."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Rise and shine, darling . . ."

Eve looked up, confused. She was curled under an afghan that she figured Mary had laid over her, and had been asleep, her tears having lulled her into tortured slumber. The gentle voice had woken her.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

_"No! Please no, sir, I beg you . . . Have mercy . . ."_

_Angelus smiled; a cruel thing, a terrible thing. One hand drifted down the girl's face, tracing the curve of her cheek, stilling on her chin. "You don't understand my dear," he murmured, the hand slipping lower, to the warm, firm flesh of her neck. A movement pushed her hair back, baring the white skin._

_"I am being merciful. There is no good in this life. It will only hurt a little . . ."_

_A sob tore from the girl. "N-no, please sir . . ."_

_"All right then," Angelus agreed, shrugging. He grinned and his face rippled, changing into a thing of terror, a thing of nightmares to haunt the dreams of little boys. "It can hurt a lot too."_

_The girl's scream never reached the air, he'd swallowed it first, along with her blood, sweet, warm blood. The body dropped to the floor limp, and Angelus raised his head, licking his bloody lips and meeting the frightened eyes of his only son._

"N-no, Daddy, no!"

"Shh, darling, don't cry. I'm here, my love," a soft voice whispered, soothing away his fears. A cool hand swept over Michael's cheeks, brushing away the tears that seeped from his closed lids. Darkness met his eyes as they opened, only the faint glint of blond hair visible.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

There was a small blonde woman sitting quietly on the end of her bed, hands folded in her lap. Her straight golden hair hung around her face where it had slipped from her intricate French braid. Her black eyes shined against the dark of the room. She was wearing a quiet smile, a tight red dress. Her shapely legs were crossed primly.

Eve backed herself into a sitting position scrunched against her headboard.

The woman smiled a little more. "Don't be afraid, baby. Not yet."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Mommy?" Michael asked, his voice still a whimper. The moonlight from his window shifted on the pale head as it turned toward him. He frowned, catching a glimpse of black . . . though all there was was black . . . how could there be more?

"No baby, it's not your mother."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

The music was still pounding, insistent, melancholy. Sara hit the stereo power button, almost on automatic, never taking her eyes from the slender figure seated on the bed. "Where's Reagan?" she demanded.

Darla gave a little, careless shrug.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

Reagan brought her knee into the demon's crotch. He folded. As he straightened, she plunged her stake into his chest.

As the dust cleared, her heart caught. A small blonde woman was standing there, waiting for her, arms crossed.

"Hello, Reagan."

"Darla," she whispered.

She smiled, the wine-colored lipstick making the gesture more pronounced. Her black eyes twinkled. "I've been waiting for you."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

A silky, platinum strand fell forward and Darla brushed it back with long, perfectly manicured nails. Black nails. Black, like her eyes . . . deep and dark . . . Sara shook her head, trying to clear it.

"Who are you?" she asked, entreated. She felt . . . off-balance . . . as if this was Darla's place, and not her own home . . . she hated feeling out of control. Another thing she'd inherited from her mother.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"I'm . . . a friend. My name is Darla . . ."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

". . . I'm here to talk to you about your father . . ."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

". . . and I'm here to protect you."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Protect me?" Sara demanded. "From what? I-I can protect myself."

"Of course you can," Darla laughed softly, one hand smoothing down the turquoise fabric of her skirt, lingering over the curve of her thigh. "You're a Slayer. And a very good one."

Sara startled, straightening from her seat on the bed. Reagan's bed. The room, usually so familiar, seemed strange to her now. "How do you know that?"

"I know lots of things," Darla informed her. "Things you don't know. Dangerous things." Her expression turned serious, sympathetic. "It's about your father."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"You . . . you look different," Reagan murmured, groping for something to say. She did. Her blonde hair fell against her bare shoulders in fat curls, falling down her back past her waist, and over her bosom almost to where her arms were crossed under her firm breasts. Her lids and lashes were darkened by heavy dark eyeliner and black mascara. She was wearing a tight bodice and short skirt, both in well-oiled black leather. Her legs were covered in pink fishnets, her feet in black leather knee high boots. A pair of trendy black sunglasses hung from the corset where the leather left her skin.

"Don'cha like?" she asked blissfully, cocking her head at a slight angle.

"I . . . I guess so," she whispered. "You're going to talk to me about my father?"

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"What about him?" Michael wondered, shivering at the memory of his dream, the look in his father's eyes as he had . . . he had . . .

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

Darla looked at her for a long moment before responding. "How is darling Angel, by the way?"

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"This is going to be hard for you to understand," Darla said gently. "Your father . . . there's a reason he's sick."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"He . . . the doctors say he's stable. They're going to do the surgery the day after tomorrow. I haven't been to see him today, but I talked to my mother, and she says he's doing all right, he's not in too much pain . . ."

She nodded deftly. "Not yet."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Because he has a tumor," Michael said stoutly, not ready to be wooed into more magic-talk. His family was never going to be normal, but he refused to let this . . . let this be something other than what it was. It was too horrible in and of itself. It couldn't be magic too.

"I wish it were that simple," Darla soothed, running a hand gently through his hair. "Your father is being punished."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

Reagan felt a queasy sensation bubbling in her stomach. "What?" She felt like she was going to cry.

Darla looked at her impatiently. "Reagan, he's got to be punished for what he's done."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017   
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Punished?" Sara echoed. "He hasn't done anything! Punished by who?"

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"I don't understand. This is . . . it isn't right. It's too big. Whatever . . . he doesn't deserve this. I don't understand."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017   
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Don't you think the punishment ought to fit the crime?"

Eve's lip trembled. "He hasn't done anything wrong."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"He has done _everything_, cherub. Murder. Torture. Mutilation. Rape. He's a monster . . . he was a monster for two hundred years." Darla's sweet voice had turned harsh, unyielding, demanding belief, acknowledgement.

"T-two hundred years?" Sara gasped, struggling to hold back the waves of nausea that rose in her stomach at the thought of her father . . . Murder. Torture. Mutilation. Rape. Her mind lingered at each word, just like Darla's chilling voice had. "He's only like . . . forty . . . fifty. He would never hurt anyone!"

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

Darla looked at her, disappointed. "Eve. Really, now."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"No. I'm not listening to this anymore. My father is a good man. He fought the good fight. He –"

"Used to be a vampire."

Reagan fell silent, jaw dropping.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"What? No, he couldn't. Couldn't do any . . . of those things."

As a Slayer, Sara had seen first hand at what demons were capable of. That wasn't her father. He wasn't capable of anything like that.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

The sweet voice gentled again, soothed, frightened. "Not now, no of course he wouldn't do anything wrong, love," she assured Michael. "But he wasn't always like he is now. He was a vampire, Michael. The thing you hate. The thing your mother spends her life fighting. Your father was a vampire."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Vampire."

Darla nodded. "Mm-hmm. Fangs and blood-lust . . . a particularly brutal bastard, too . . . earned himself a nickname and everything . . ."

Tuesday, December 12th, 2017 Valley of the Suns Cemetery

"The Scourge of Europe?" she echoed, feeling desperately empty inside.

She nodded.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

_The mask was familiar, the misshapen features, but not on that face . . . not with that smile . . . and his eyes were the wrong color, they shouldn't be yellow, they couldn't be yellow . . . He was vampire._

_Evil._

_He was smiling at Michael with blood dripping down his chin . . . _

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"They . . . he was . . . they called him . . ." Reagan swallowed and looked at her, trying to calm herself. "He was bad enough that they called him the Scourge of Europe?"

"Yes. He was . . . a machine."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Cold . . . emotionless . . . methodical . . ."

Eve looked at her, motionless. Feeling cold and awful, feeling every inch of her itched. Her blood itched.

"Efficient. But not completely metal. He was creative. Very, very good at what he did . . . he loved it, you understand. And so he treated it like something he loved. Crafted each and every murder with prowess."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017   
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"You're lying!" Sara shrieked, pushing away on the bed, back. She ran into the headboard and stopped. Darla was still smiling at her, lovely and too real.

"I never lie," she promised in a honey-smooth tone. Sara shook her head, but the oath swept over her, wrapping around her head, adding to the fog. Tears filled Sara's eyes, caught on her lashes, and she felt like she should be yelling or . . . or running or something. But there was nowhere to go.

"You can't run away from the truth," Darla said softly. "It'll always find you."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017   
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"Just like the past," she murmured, looking as though something was suddenly distracting her.

Reagan paled beneath her tan. "No . . . it . . . it can't. He . . . he wasn't. I don't believe this."

Darla pulled a tissue out from between her breasts and handed it to the girl. "It's all right, baby. I know it's hard, at first."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"I want my Mommy," he insisted. "Where is she?"

"She's at the hospital . . . she's worried about your father. Because she knows, she knows the truth . . . she knows he's being punished, and that he's going to suffer for what he did . . ."

"She doesn't!" Michael sobbed. "He's . . . he's my dad and he would never hurt anything. Anyone."

"Can't you just see him?" Darla urged silkily. "Yellow eyes, razor teeth . . . different. There's always been something different about him. He's not like other fathers, is he? He tainted your life, Michael. He hurt you too."

"But . . . but . . ."

"Shh, you know I'm right. It'll be easier if you accept it now, if you let go of him. It's for the best. He needs to die."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"I don't want him to!" Sara cried, the tears escaping, coursing down her cheeks. She dashed them away angrily.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"How could you possibly know?" Eve sobbed quietly, clutching the tissue Darla had produced in still painted, still shaking hands.

"Oh, darling . . . I lost him, just as you're losing him."

"Losing him? No, I . . . I don't understand. I'm . . . he's . . ."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

". . . he's going to be just fine. Because he's a _good man_ and he . . . he's going to be all right."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"That's very sweet," Darla murmured. "I wish I could have such faith."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

She shook her head, sadly, and then looked up suddenly, as if struck by something, all of a sudden. She laughed. "Oh, Reagan! You don't see it, do you? You don't see any of it."

She drew a long, thin, unfiltered cigarette from whence the Kleenex came. Holding it delicately between her dark stained lips, she lit it with a flourish and the flick of a match. She breathed in deeply, obviously enjoying the taste and the buzz.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Oh, no, you can't smoke in here," Eve protested. "The smoke detector . . ."

Darla looked at her stonily.

"Oh, well . . ." she was flustered. "Let me open the window, at least, okay? Would that be all right?"

She smiled. "Perfect. Please."

Eve went over and opened the window. Darla went and sat on the sill, the hand holding the cigarette outside the window, her arm resting on her bent leg. "You don't see any of it," she repeated quietly, the smoke all of a sudden adding a certain gentle breathlessness to her speech.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"What do you mean?"

Darla sighed, for all the world an annoyed elder sister, done trying to upgrade her sibling to worldly status.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"You don't see any of it." She sighed. "You will, though." She shook her head. "Just trust me on this one, okay? Think about it. It'll come to you."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"What will come?" Sara asked tearfully.

"The truth."

"But . . . how?"

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"If you would only _listen_ to me, then some of the pain . . . it would be less, when you do learn . . ."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"How am I going to learn? I don't understand."

"That's what I've been telling you," she sighed from upon the tombstone she'd sat upon, crossing her pretty legs and resting the hand with the cigarette on one knee.

"Please, stop playing games with me," Reagan pleased, on the verge of tears.

Darla looked at her. "all right." She paused a moment. "You're already awake, so . . ."

_Don't worry, Reagan. You're awake now, and that's good._

_What? Of course I'm awake._

_You don't know, yet._

_Sometimes I don't understand you, Lex._

_But you will. Soon you'll understand everything. _

The woman's voice. The black eyes.

She looked at Darla.

"You . . ." She shook it off. No. Darla was here to help her. She couldn't . . .

It was probably just her imagination.

"You're already awake," she was saying, "So . . ."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

"So . . . it'll be when you sleep."

She sniffled. "What?"

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"Honestly, Reagan . . . I can't spoon feed you . . ."

Reagan's lip trembled. _I can't do this. I can't do this anymore. Please, let me wake up, and let all of this be a dream. God . . . please . . ._

Darla tossed her head back as she laughed, smiling, eyes shining. "Oh, Reagan! Don't talk to _God_. God can't hear you!"

Reagan looked at her, heart fallen. _How could she . . ._

"And you're already awake . . . that's what I've been trying to tell you . . ." Her smile faded. "Seriously, Reagan, how are we ever going to talk if you don't trust me?"

"I . . . I trust you," she stuttered. She wasn't sure she did, actually, wasn't sure who she should trust, but . . . Darla was right here, right now . . . Darla wanted to help her . . .

Darla smiled again. "Good." She drew out another cigarette, extended it toward Reagan. The girl took it, a little unsure.

"It's all right," she soothed.

Reagan looked down at it, listlessly.

"Well," Darla announced, sliding off of her marker and to her feet. "I'll be around, if you need me."

Reagan looked up, startled.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"I don't understand," Michael whispered, drawing the blankets up higher, right to his chin.

"Oh, I know you don't. But you will. Now, I have to be going . . ." The little body in the bed began to shake at that.

"No! Don't go, please . . . please don't go?" he begged, clutching at her arm. She drew it away quickly, gently.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

She smiled. "Don't worry. I'll be around. But . . . not tonight."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"Have I done something wrong?"

"What? No, of course not, darling. It's just . . ." she paused, thinking of the correct wording. "You need a little time to mull it over."

Reagan said nothing, lowered her eyes in thought.

"I'll be around," she repeated, slipping the sunglasses from the top of her corset and sliding them onto her face. She did look good in them.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Don't go."

"I have to, Michael. It's for the best, you'll see."

"Please stay?" he whispered. The dark screamed at him, nipped at his senses, pointed claws at his face, his hands . . . "I'm afraid."

"You should be."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"I'll be back," Darla promised. "An overused line, but it happens to be true this time. Don't worry, I'm watching you."

"Where are you going?" Sara whispered, drawing up her knees, leaning against Reagan's backboard.

"You ask too many questions, my dear. Goodnight."

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Eve Gryphon's Bedroom**

Eve couldn't manage a reply, just thought, felt. When she brought her eyes from her trembling hands, Darla was gone.

**Tuesday, December 12th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

Sara closed her eyes and reached up to wipe away the tears; when she opened them again, the room was empty and the music was back on, pounding, pounding, swirling through her brain.

_wanna be unblue . . ._


	4. Mr Hyde

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Angel was still heavily sedated, the gentle _hush_ of his drugged breathing quiet, but still the only sound in the room other than the tiny, incessant beeping of his heart monitor.

Buffy was sitting with him, still, and quite content in doing so, but getting restless. He'd been asleep a long time, and she was starting to worry about her children. Starting to miss them horribly.

She checked her watch. Three fourteen. And thirty-eight seconds. Too late to call, though she could; Mary would probably still be up, checking on each of the five rooms every so often, making sure everyone was still safe and warm, tucked under their covers. But that would risk waking the children, and she didn't want to do that, didn't want to rouse them from the peace of slumber and not be there to lull them back to sleep.

She looked back down at Angel on the hospital green sheets. He'd told her once they used those colors, the muted greens and pleasant blues, to keep patients serene. Docile. She thought he was kidding, cracking a joke in his dry sarcasm, but now, thinking about it, having drowned in the muted greens and pleasant blues for two days, two nights, she decided that he was right. They were strangely calming. And, to their credit, the hospital had been rather quiet since she'd been there, the patients indeed docile. Angel, for example, subdued on his little bed.

She touched his face; just needing to feel the warmth of his skin, make sure he was still tangible. So far, so good. He was warm – a little warmer than he should have been, she worried briefly, checking the monitor with his temperature (101 even) – and moving softly with breath. She stroked his hair and gave him a soft kiss on the forehead.

He didn't stir.

Buffy stood carefully, making oh so sure to not wake him up, not disturb him, being careful to not even rustle the sheets, for fear of disturbing him.

He was still.

She stretched a little, picked her purse up from the chair where it was sitting, slipped on her jacket and then her bag. Checked on Angel one more time, rethought her leaving him and went back, lingered for a small moment. Gave him another kiss, checked his monitors again.

Decided she was right in the first place, and left the room, shutting the door behind her without a sound.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

_The woman flushed, angry now. The blush traveled from her high, sculpted cheekbones, down her thin, swan-like neck, down to her breasts, pulled up tight above her corset and the bodice of her dress. _

_Angelus's eyes didn't follow it down that far; his eyes landed where the pink flush hit her smooth throat, and stopped there. _

_"You're not invited here," she spat._

_"Actually, love," he purred, moving closer, to where he could feel the heat of her body, to where he could see the anger in her eyes, but not close enough to touch her, "you're quite wrong in that respect. I have been invited."_

_He looked back behind him, to the poor girl laying a top the bed, drained and dead. The woman in the doorway followed his gaze, flinched briefly, but recovered quickly enough to fool herself into believing he hadn't noticed._

_"Monster." _

_He laughed. "I suppose that's a fairly accurate description, lass." He sighed, pretending to be upset with her; in reality, he was full enough of blood and the thrill of the chase, the kill, to be nearly giddy. "You always saw right through me, hmm, Grace, me cherub?"_

_She turned to go, but in a flash, he was at her side, in the doorway, in her way, hands cuffing her pale wrists._

_"I'll scream," she threatened._

_He grinned. "Please." He chuckled. "It improves the taste." He pulled her closer by her wrists, brought her body right against his. He kissed the soft skin of her throat – flush still fairly evident – and looked up at her, grinning a grin that sent cold chills throughout her. "Makes the blood heated and . . ." he paused for effect. "Salty."_

_She screamed. He hit her, slammed the backside of his hand across her face, then threw her across the bed. A gnawing hurt hit her stomach as she looked at her skin as it brushed the dead girl's. She bit her tongue, not wanting to let him hear her scream again. Before she could rise, he was on top of her, heavy preternatural body pressing her to the goose feather mattress. He brushed his fingertips across her throat; she jerked away. He frowned._

_"Don't like to be touched there, pet?" he asked dully. He slid down her body 'til he was on his knees on the floor beside the bed, hands up and around her legs, up her thighs. He slid his hands up her legs, underneath her skirt. She screamed again, tried to get up. He threw her back to the mattress. Sat on her hips, skirt up off her legs and billowing around his waist. She screamed. He growled and his face morphed to his demon guise. He put his hand on the soft, pale inside of her upper thigh. Gently, he pressed his lips to her flesh, kissed her. She groaned, no longer able to scream. Then he bared his fangs, and ended her life with another kiss._

_She didn't scream._

_Michael, watching in the corner, did._

"Baby, oh, baby . . ."

Michael felt warm arms around him, felt himself being lifted from his blankets, from his bed, to someplace warm and soft, sweet smelling. He opened his eyes, looked up.

"Mommy?" he whispered quietly, voice hoarse with tears.

She smiled, rocked him a little. "It's me, sweetheart." She kissed the top of his head, and he cuddled against her, let her rock him gently in her lap. "You okay?" she asked quietly after a moment, holding him close with one arm and using the other hand to gently turn his tear-streaked face to look up at her. He nodded, sniffling, not really knowing what else to do.

"Bad dream?" she asked softly, cradling him in both arms again, rocking him. He nodded, snuggling against her, clutching her arms with his cold little hands.

"Stay with me," he pleaded. She looked down at him, uncertain. She didn't want to leave him . . . but she'd only meant to leave Angel long enough to make sure her babies were okay, just a couple minutes, half an hour . . . a harsh pang hit her squarely in the stomach when she thought of her husband waking up in his hospital bed with no one there beside him.

"Please," he whispered, almost crying again. "Don't leave, Mommy."

She kissed the top of his head again, softly. Held him close, rocked him a little.

"Please."

"Okay, baby," she whispered. "I'm here, okay? Mommy's here."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Marquisha Rodriguez, R.N., administered a small dose of pain killer to the seventy-two year old leukemia battler in room 312, made sure he was comfortable, and left the room, closing the door slowly behind her. Checking her clipboard and then her watch, she gently turned the knob to 314.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

Michael, bundled in a thick, warm afghan and perched in a well loved kitchen chair, watched his mother make tea on their kitchen stove. The water nearing boil, she left the pot on the stove and went to the cupboard, taking out a few boxes of flavored teas.

"Let's see . . . we've got black . . . but you don't like that . . . we have green . . ." She looked up. "You like green tea, right, baby?"

He nodded. "But not now. Any fruit . . . berries?"

"Black cherry? Wild berry?" She pawed through her boxes. "Peach?"

He didn't respond. She frowned a little and got a few more boxes down from the shelf. "Um . . ." She opened the box, wrinkled her nose. "Leaves."

Only Angel used those. He liked his tea strong; he drank it black and sugarless, like his coffee. The box was nearly full, though; he rarely consumed caffeine. Buffy knew vaguely how to make tea from the leaves; Angel had shown her once . . . but she'd only done it twice, and probably couldn't do it again if asked.

"You don't like it from the leaves, do you, love?"

He shook his head. "Can I have peach?"

She nodded, picked out a bag of the peach. She closed the rest of the boxes, and started to return them to the cabinet. Before she could finish, the tea kettle sounded, and she dropped her boxes, hurried to take it from the heat. She placed it on a cool burner and took two worn mugs from another cabinet.

Michael watched as his petite blonde mother filled the two mugs nearly full with hot water, and inserted a clever little bag into both. She took a mug carefully in each hand and brought them over to the table, setting them down. Michael took his by the handle in one hand, accepting the spoon his mother handed him. Buffy left hers abandoned on the table, however; she went back over and finished putting away the spicy, sweet-smelling boxes, then drained the tea pot and placed it back at its place between the burners of the stove.

She took a spoon, walked over to the table, and sat opposite him. By that time, he'd already removed his tea bag, squeezed the remaining herbs and flavorings from it with the rounded back of his spoon, stirred it if for nothing other than emphasis, and was nursing it quietly. Buffy went through the motions and took a drink.

"Is it okay?"

He didn't look up from the tempestuous pinkish brown tides lapping against the deep blue porcelain shores. "It's fine. It doesn't have caffeine, does it?"

She looked at her son thoughtfully. "I don't think so."

He nodded, eyes still lowered to his cup. "Good."

After a long pause, she started in on him carefully. "Been having a lot of bad dreams lately?"

"No. Just tonight."

She nodded, wetting her lips. Hmm. Peach. "Just tonight, huh? You want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

She was worried that he was being so guarded, and thought he was acting a little like children do when they're embarrassed and frightened by the consequences of something they've done. The halted way they answer when they're hiding throw up, or a wet bed. She considered the possibility that he'd had a wet dream, abolished the thought – he was too young, wasn't he? She wasn't a guy, and certainly not an authority on the matter, and she and Angel hadn't had that talk – but wished she'd checked anyway.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" she asked carefully, not wanting to tread on toes.

"Yeah, I guess." He paused. "Is there any pie left?" Buffy, Willow, and Tara had made pies on Saturday for a gathering at the elementary school the following day, but there had been extras. The Gryphon, Rosenberg, Harris, Wyndham-Pryce, and Giles families had been eating off the remains from the over-exuberant day of baking since then.

She wrinkled her brow. "I don't know. I'll check."

She rose from the table, walked over to the pantry door on the far side of the room. She turned on the single-light-bulb light and checked. There was indeed pie left. She took the half-empty tin of cherry rhubarb from the shelf, brought it into the kitchen, and set it on the counter. She removed the saran wrap, cut her little boy a sizable piece, put it on a plate and took it over to him. She didn't clean up her mess before sitting back down.

"How is it? Still good?"

He nodded. Very out of character for him, she worried. He was talkative, friendly. Rarely guarded like this.

"Are you sure you're feeling all right, love?"

He swallowed a big mouthful of flaky crust and sweet and tart filling. "I'm fine, Mom."

She nodded, not really believing him. "Not feeling bad? Were you sick while I was gone?"

He shook his head. "No." Then, after a moment: "Ask Mary."

"No, I trust you," she murmured. "I'm just worried about you."

She checked the round, friendly clock on the wall, just shot it a glance. Three forty-eight. She'd already been gone half an hour. She wondered if he was okay, if he was still sleeping peacefully, pulse a little low, but steady, temperature just under worry level, breathing on a machine, but breathing . . . or if he'd woken, breaking from another jolting nightmare he didn't understand and refused to talk about . . . refused because there were nurses present, because that's the way he was, in their bed, anything, but he couldn't talk where he wasn't absolutely _safe_ . . . she wondered if something had happened, was he okay, did he need her, was the just below worry level gone, were there doctors in his room invading the little pocket of himself that he refused to let them have, looking up from behind the mask and speaking her name . . . calling for her, for help, with no avail . . .

She shook herself clear of those thoughts. Almost. "Baby . . ." she cleared her throat of the thick spot and started again. "Baby, I'm gonna go use the phone, okay? I'll be right back."

He nodded, blonde head down again, baby blues once more lowered to his mug.

She left the room quickly enough to feel like she was getting where she needed to go in a timely fashion, but not quickly enough to make her feel like she was speeding out of it, leaving her little boy all alone in the dust of her departure.

She walked into her the living room, sat on the couch, and picked the receiver from its cradle on the end table. On the north side of the wall, not opposite, but to her left, Mary was curled up asleep on the other couch, covered with a quilt. She hadn't stirred when she'd entered, so she figured it was fine to go ahead and make the call.

She dialed seven numbers, and after a couple of rings, a tired voice answered. "Sunnydale Memorial Hospital, how can I direct your call?"

"Um . . . hi. I'm Buffy Gryphon . . . my husband is in room three fourteen . . . is there any way you . . . could have someone . . . check on him . . . ?"

There was a pause.

"Three fourteen?"

"Yeah."

"Hold on, let me page the nurse on duty . . . I'm going to put you on hold, all right?"

"Okay."

There was a small click as she was indeed put on hold. A moment later, another small click, and then a slightly accented voice. "Hello?"

"Um . . . hi."

"Mrs. Gryphon?"

"Hi . . ."

"Hello . . . this is Marquisha Rodriguez . . . I'm the nurse on duty."

"Have you seen my husband?"

"Mm-hmm. Just a couple minutes ago. His vitals are good . . . his pulse is fine, he's breathing okay . . . he's on the respirator, but he's all right . . . and he's sound asleep."

Buffy breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, thanks . . . really, thank you so much . . ."

"No problem. It's really fairly common . . . if there's anything else, please feel free to call back."

"Thanks . . . bye."

"Bye."

Click, and the dial tone. Buffy hung up the phone. Before her hand had left the receiver, the phone rang a short ring. She wrinkled her brow. There was something weird about the ring.

Never mind the something weird about someone calling at quarter to four.

She picked it up immediately, not wanting it to wake anyone. "Hello?"

"Buffy?"

She froze, nearly dropped the phone.

"Buffy? Honey?"

"Mom?"

"Hi, honey."

Weak: "Mommy?"

"Buffy, I need you here, okay? I don't feel very well . . ."

A thunk as the other party dropped the phone. A buzzing, a fuzzy silence. Then the click of the line going dead, the dial tone.

**Winter, 2000  
The Summers' Home**

"_I'm sorry. She's gone. It looks like an aneurysm, consequence from the surgery. I'm sorry." _

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

Buffy rose very slowly from the couch, every bit of her feeling filled with heavy, unyielding ice. Pounds upon pounds of liquid nitrogen coursing through her veins. She felt sick.

She walked, trancelike, back to the kitchen. Michael was still huddled at the edge of the table, pie gone, just a little swish of tea left in the bottom of his cup.

"Michael, sweetheart, I . . ." She felt his eyes on her. Indeed, he was looking up at her with his big, pretty blue eyes. "I have to go back to the hospital, sweetheart, I –"

"No! You can't leave me!"

"I . . ." She broke inside. Heart shattered as result of the friendly liquid nitrogen. "Come with me," she whispered. He looked up at her, wordless. "To the hospital. I have to be with Angel –" She caught herself. "With your daddy. We'll pack you a bag, and we'll get you a cot, and you can . . . sleep there, with me and your daddy and . . ." She was going to say 'be a family', but she didn't.

He did, though. "And be a family?"

She felt a little shocked by his statement, but it was only momentary, dulled horribly by the morning's earlier alarm.

"Yeah," she whispered. "Be a family."

"Do you want me to get dressed?"

She shook her head. "No, sweetie. Let's . . . let's just go, okay? Remember . . . when you were little –" When he was little? She thought. He was still just a baby. Too young to have to do this. "—and we'd all get in the van and drive out to Mr. Giles's, we'd all . . . we'd all stay there, together and . . . have little pajama parties, remember?"

He nodded. He did remember that part, being gently woken by his mother, his father, taking him up into their arms, in his pajamas, blanket wrapped around him. He remembered being placed in the car, feeling a little cold, or a little hot, depending on what season it was, and how he'd been sleeping. Remembered leaning against a parent or a sibling or a friend and watching the ink-bathed countryside go past the car's windows. He remembered making little tents on the floor of Mr. Giles house, or Aunt Willow and Tara's, or Aunt Mary and Uncle Xander's, or – on rare occasions – Aunt Faith and Uncle Gunn's, and falling asleep all cuddled up in his nest of blankets, sisters and friends all cuddled with him, making sure he knew he was safe.

What he did _not_ remember about those little endeavors, what he couldn't remember, what he wasn't old enough to have realized, was that shortly after Mommy and Daddy had their little cherubs all safe and sound, under the watchful eyes of trusted allies, tucked into their covers, they had gone out, into that ink-bathed countryside and fought the real demons that he'd learned to be afraid of. He'd never had monsters under the bed.

That was silly. Monsters did not live under beds.

But they did live out in the dark places that you can't see during the day, they did live in the earth and in mausoleums . . . they did live all around him, in his town, his home, on the Hellmouth. And, no matter how hard they tried to hide it, his parents were Warriors, and there was no way to keep their work from following them home.

He knew what went bump in the night, and he'd learned to hate them.

For making his family something out of storybooks. Something that was a little short of _real_.

"Okay," he whispered. "We can do that."

She smiled, relieved. "Good. You just stay right here, and I'll pack you a bag, all right?"

He nodded, and watched her as she left the room. She was out of his sight before she started crying.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

Buffy cradled her son in her arms, held him like a small child. He was relaxed against her, arms laced around her neck. Tired. She held his duffel on her shoulder, still kept both arms around him.

"Mary," she whispered before leaving the living room for the foyer and, beyond that, the front door. The woman stirred slowly, fingers brushing against one another, head moving slightly, a small noise. Eyes fluttered open, slowly. "Hey," she rasped, sleep still heavy in her throat.

"I'm taking Michael to the hospital with me, all right?"

"Mm-hmm," she murmured. "He okay?"

"He's fine. Just wants to be with his mommy."

Mary struggled to a sitting position, pushing the blanket away from her. She shook her unkempt head. "All right. Did you check on the kids?"

Buffy thought. God, that seemed like such a long time ago. "Yeah. Everyone but Reagan and Sara." Their bedrooms were at the end of the hall . . . Eve's bedroom was downstairs, by the art studio her parents had created for her, but the other four children's bedrooms – and her own – were up the stairs. Lexi and Michael's were on the right of the stairs, next to a bathroom at the end of the hall and a closet next to Michael's room; Sara and Reagan's – in that order, left to right – were to the left of the stairs, the only two rooms before the door that led to the attic stairs. She had intended to check on them, of course, but had been stopped by the upset with Michael.

"Sara's asleep," Mary murmured. "But Reagan isn't here."

Buffy blanked, just stared at the woman on the couch, in total shock. "What?" she whispered, voice hard.

"She's out on patrol."

"It's nearly four in the morning."

Mary sighed. "I know that. But she . . . needs to burn off some steam. Don't worry . . . I've been calling her on her cell every twenty minutes. She's fine. Just restless."

That sounded about right. Like Reagan.

But it didn't stop her from being worried.

"Okay," Buffy nodded. "all right. After I take Michael to the hospital, get everyone settled, then I'll go out and look for her. She's got her cell phone?"

"Mm-hmm. And her beeper."

Buffy nodded again, then readjusted Michael on her hip. "Okay. Thanks Mary. I mean . . . for everything."

Her face softened, usually brazen, flippant, now . . . compassionate . . . was that hurt? "Don't worry about it, 'kay? You just take care of your family, and I'll help in any way I can."

She rose, put her arms gently around the other woman. "You mean a lot to me, Buffy Gryphon. Don't forget that, huh?"

She wouldn't.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"All right . . ." Buffy said, trying to be cheerful, when they arrived in front of 314. "Here we are."

"Is he asleep?" Probably, Buffy thought. And so was Michael, nearly. His eyelids drooped, and his body was getting warmer and heavier all the while. She gave him a kiss and adjusted his weight once more before opening the door.

She swung opened the door quietly, not wanting to wake Angel. Stepping in, she saw that the cot she'd called in for was already there, along the left wall. That was a surprise, and a nice one.

The other surprise might have been nice, but the shock hit her hard in the gut.

At the end of the long white hospital bed where Angel was sleeping peacefully, crouched and quiet, was Reagan.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Reagan," Buffy whispered. The girl turned slowly. Buffy's lip trembled. "Reagan."

She stood. "Mom . . . I know you're probably pretty mad . . . I know it's . . . late . . . I'm sorry, but . . ."

Buffy walked over to the cot, laid Michael down, then set his duffel at the side of the bed. She made sure he was covered and comfortable, gave him a soft kiss, and left him.

"Reagan," she repeated. The girl lowered her dark eyes, mistaking her mother's quiet. She thought she was in trouble.

Buffy looked at her daughter, not really feeling that anything would profit from her taking the girl in her arms, but wanting to, to make it clearly known that she was there for her, that everything would be all right.

She didn't. Instead, she crossed her arms across her chest, hands folded over her arms, white knuckled, nails driving little half moons into her tanned flesh. She looked at Reagan, studying her, trying to get clues out of her, without having to say anything. She'd been crying; her makeup was smudged at the corners and a little uneven where she'd tried quickly to make it up again, as to not be noticed. She'd been biting her lip, a bad habit of hers, and the soft pink skin was broken and bleeding from her trials with it. She, too, clenched her hands, and there were dots of blood on her palms from doing it excessively, driving in too far. Over all, she looked a mess. She was rumpled and frayed at the edges, face streaked with tears and a small rivulet of blood from the corner of her eye. She had not bothered to tend to herself, her wounds, before coming in to see her father.

"What are you doing here?" Buffy asked quietly, still very shocked.

She shifted uncomfortably. "I . . . I don't know. I just . . . wanted to make sure he was . . . okay."

Buffy wrinkled her brow a little. That wasn't true. She thought the sentiment felt right, but she'd inherited something else from Angel . . . they were both terrible liars. Reagan got uncomfortable, flushed, fidgeted, stalled when she wasn't telling the truth, and it showed now. That wasn't the reason she was here, and it certainly wasn't the reason she'd stayed out all night and into the morning fighting demons.

"Baby, you can tell me, it's okay . . ."

"I told you." It was sharp, almost spit out at her. She flinched from it, not expecting her to react like that. Reagan looked sorry and shocked. Apparently she hadn't expected the little outburst, either.

"Maybe we should go outside," Buffy murmured, trying to do something to calm her daughter. Maybe moving would help. A change of scenery. Both these things would be achieved through leaving the room, and they wouldn't wake Michael or Angel, provided another sudden flare-up should occur.

Reagan took a step back. Her dark eyes roamed the room. She was panicking. She didn't want to leave. She didn't want a change of scenery. She wanted to stay here. Here was safe. Here was stable.

There was no telling about outside.

Buffy closed the gap between them, going over to her daughter and gently taking her hands in hers, holding them gently. Trying desperately to reassure her. She was starting to teeter, to tear away from the situation.

"Reagan, sweetheart," she murmured, drawing the child toward her. Against her. She didn't struggle, didn't move at all. It worried her. "Why don't we just sit down and talk, all right?"

She was quiet for a long minute. Then she relaxed against her completely. And hardened her muscles, drew everything taut. "Mom," she murmured.

She gently separated herself from Reagan, just enough to be able to look at her. "Baby?"

She started crying, really quietly, gently. "I think I'm gonna be sick," she whispered, tears streaking her face. Buffy nodded. "Okay. Okay, baby." She took her hand, led her out the door. "Let's go, darling. I'll take you to the bathroom."

She did. Once coaxed there, Reagan burst through the nearest stall door, slid to her knees, and hugged porcelain. She leaned over the bowl, retching violently. Buffy fell to her knees beside her, putting one arm around the girl's back and using the other to push back her current of dark hair. She coughed, vomited, coughed. She was sobbing, crying hard now. Shaking hard.

After a small eternity, she stopped, just stayed suspended over the bowl, nothing hitting the water now but the occasional salty teardrop. After too long of this, Buffy slid her arm further around her, drew her up from her ceramic lover and up against her chest. She was still crying, but less, and quietly now, and still shaking, hard. Her breathing slowed, gradually. Buffy rocked her gently, something she'd not been allowed to do with Reagan since she was a tiny thing. Reagan loved her mother – just as her mother loved her – but it had been a long time since they'd been really close. Holding her was something Buffy missed desperately.

But she didn't want to have to do it like this. Didn't want anything to have to be because of this.

Reagan sniffled a little, swallowed, then drew in a couple of good breaths greedily. "Mommy."

Buffy kissed her forehead softly. "Reagan."

"It's too much," she whispered, and started to cry again. "It's just too much."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

She woke before the beeping changed, but just before; it took just long enough for her to confirm where she was, and then everything crumbled.

Buffy had been a Slayer for twenty-one years. When she woke, she woke quickly, silently, with a minimum of fuss. She opened her eyes, unsure of what had woken her, noted Angel's still length along her body and tilted her head up to see Reagan spooned around Michael, both blessedly asleep, the nightmares of waking gone for the moment. The inspection took a split second, and then her respite ended.

The heart monitor, with its slow and steady beep that had lulled her through a moment of sleep, or an hour, changed.

At first it was only a tiny shift; imperceptibly quicker, and the spikes on the chart were different, larger, disturbed.

Buffy's heart stopped, as if in response. "Doctor," she called, but no sound came out of her locked throat. She slid off the hospital bed where her husband lay — her husband, her life _no it wasn't going faster_ — and found herself in a heap on the floor . . . pushed herself to her feet, towards the door, but then the sound changed again . . .

There was a crash and Buffy spun back, eyes widening with inexpressible terror as Angel's body — so soft against hers a moment before, so warm — stiffened, jerked, his jaw clenched. Buffy found her voice as her stomach crumbled and she reached the bed she'd just left, arms closing about his arms _stop him, keep him still, he'll hurt himself, don't let him hurt himself_. A doctor burst through the doors before her scream could reach the air, followed by nurses that gently pushed Buffy away, but no, no, Angel was jerking, he would be hurt, she had to hold him still . . .

"Just come over here Mrs. Gryphon," one of the nurses soothed, pulling her to the cot. Reagan was awake, dark eyes wide enough to drown in, cold and desperate.

"Mommy?" she whispered and Buffy shook her head, straining for a glimpse, an answer. The sounds kept coming — the thumps of body against bed and men were coming to hold him down. _I can hold him down,_ she whispered silently. _Let me touch him. Let me take care of him. You can't take care of him._

The doctor slid a needles into the end of one of Angel's lines and slowly the noise quieted, the body — no, not a body, _Angel_ — in the bed stilling. A ragged noise escaped Buffy's throat finally, the first since waking. A sob.

"Mom? What happened?" Reagan appealed in a terrified whisper, but Buffy could only shake her head. Nothing. Nothing. He was okay, he would be okay . . . He had to be . . . She turned and her arms closed around her half-sitting daughter, not sure if she was seeking strength or giving it.

"Mrs. Gryphon?" the doctor asked and Buffy turned, releasing her daughter. Michael stirred, Reagan's hand descended numbly on his head, soothing gently, without thought.

"What happened?" Buffy managed. "One minute he was fine and then . . . and then . . ." Her hand gestured emptily toward the bed. Angel was still again, quiet, sleeping. She wanted to run to him, to tell them all to get out. She would protect him . . . The doctor glanced at Reagan, but Buffy waved him onward.

"Your husband had a seizure. The tumor may be affecting blood flow to certain areas of his brain," the doctor sighed. He looked tired, haggard. What time was it? Buffy had no idea how long she'd slept . . . Reagan still had hollows beneath her eyes, but that might not be from exhaustion.

"I-is it harmful?" she heard herself ask, her eyes returning to her husband, unable to look away. "Will there be . . . damage?"

"I don't think so," the doctor replied. "Though of course, the sooner he can be treated, the better. I'm going to give Doctor Hughes a call. He'll be in soon. I'm sure he'll be able to tell you more about what's going on." Buffy nodded numbly, knowing there were more questions she should ask: what did the doctor give him? Would it happen again? She just couldn't. Couldn't ask. Couldn't talk to this guy, to anyone.

"Thanks."

"Can I have the nurses get you anything?" the doctor asked, looking concerned. Buffy didn't notice; she was still watching Angel. Reagan did; she couldn't look at her father.

"I just need to use the phone."

"You can use the one here. Just dial 9 to get out of the building." Buffy nodded and the doctor cast a look at Reagan, who nodded that she was okay, they were all okay. "All right. Well, I'm right outside. Doctor Hughes should be here in the next hour. If you need anything . . ."

"We're fine," Buffy replied in a strained voice. He left finally. She walked over to Angel, one hand hovering over his calm face. Breathing again, slowly . . . sleeping again. Fine as he had been before the tumult. "Oh, baby . . . we're fine."

"Mom?" Reagan ventured and Buffy started, remembering she wasn't alone after all. She glanced back at her children. Michael was, miraculously, still asleep.

"Sorry. I . . . you okay?" Buffy asked, because she knew that she ought to. She ought to be worried about Reagan. About all her children. She ought to care.

It shocked her a bit that she didn't. She had always been a good mother . . . maybe not the most matriarchal woman, but . . . she did care; she was there for them. In tune to them. When they'd been babies . . . she could sleep for hours, sleep through anything, noises, lights, but . . . if her children stirred, even a little bit, if they woke, or made tiny noises in their sleep, she was awake in an instant, and at their side. But now . . . she was somewhere else. There was something there, some . . . tug at the edge of her heart, that pulled whenever she thought about them, her babies, hurting, abandoned, but . . . the real hurt, that was with Angel.

Reagan shook her head a tiny bit. "No."

Buffy nodded in acknowledgement and turned to the phone.

"I'm going to call Xander to come get you," she said, dialing 9 and then pausing, searching for the familiar number. She seized on it finally, dialing despite Reagan's desperate noise.

"Mom! You're not sending us home!" she insisted.

"That's exactly what I'm doing," Buffy sighed, one hand rubbing at her temples as the phone rang. "This is no place for you. You'll be . . . it'd be best if you were home."

"What about you?" Reagan demanded sharply, sliding off the cot and walking over to her mother. Buffy gazed up at her middle child. Up. Reagan was taller than she was. "You're not leaving."

"I can't leave," Buffy managed in a close-to-steady voice. The ringing stopped, the line was picked up.

"Mary?" Xander's tired voice asked on the other end of the line.

"Sorry, Xand, it's Buffy."

"Oh God. How you doing?" Xander asked, groggy and too-awake at the same time. "I was going to come down this morning . . . I had to work all yesterday, I'm sorry . . ."

"Don't worry about it," Buffy replied numbly. "Sorry to call you so early. There's been some, um, some new developments and I need someone to take Michael and Reagan home. I didn't want to call Mary, since the other kids are still home and . . ."

"I understand. It's fine. I'll be right down, just give me fifteen minutes. It's, uh, room 314 isn't it? God, what a number."

"Yeah." Room 314. It had been something else once, but her mind was too tired to grasp the old memory. "Thanks."

"No problem. I'll . . . I'll be right there." Buffy whispered a goodbye and hung up, turning to her pale, desperately angry daughter.

"It's not fair," Reagan whispered accusingly. "Why do I have to leave? I want to stay with him too." Buffy felt her daughter's ache; she knew it, because it was hers too. But this time she couldn't soothe it away. Dark eyes met blue-green. The mother's hand found her daughter's cheek.

"Baby, life isn't fair."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

She was silent in the car, sitting in the passenger's seat with Michael in her lap, gazing out the window, eyes scouring the occasional lights and the beginning of morning, but her mind elsewhere. Crying, but Xander didn't say anything. He knew better. Reagan was his goddaughter; he'd known her all her life. And he knew that people like her retreated inward, found their solace there.

He could hurt her if he tried to intrude.

He pulled into the familiar driveway, parked in the spot closest to the house without parking Mary in. Cut the engine, went around to the side and opened the passenger's side, scooped Michael into his arms, held him close. Reagan got out of the car, in some trance state, performing an action because she knew it was what came next in the scheme of things . . . the car door opened, she got out, went inside. That's how things worked.

Breezing through the door, she ran upstairs, to her bedroom, not stopping. Xander sighed, took a peek into the living room; Mary curled up and sleeping fitfully on the sofa. He took Michael upstairs, tucked him into bed. He sat with him a couple minutes, kissed his forehead, and left him, shutting the door.

Went downstairs to his sleeping wife.

He sat on the edge of the couch; knees and planted hands warm from her. Brushed a few stray strands of hair from her face, kissed her softly. She stirred, dark lashes parted. Smiled a little.

"Hey." Her voice was heavy with sleep . . . or, more likely, he thought, sleep deprivation. Same demon he was battling with.

"Hey there, pretty lady," he whispered, running his hand along the side of her face. "How you doin'?"

She closed her eyes for a minute, then opened them slowly and pulled herself up and back into a sitting position. "I don't know. I'm . . . worried for them. The kids. Buffy." She paused. "Angel."

He nodded. "She . . . Buffy . . . she's . . . riled. She's hurting."

She smiled a little, sadly. "Wouldn't you be?"

He grinned. "Yeah, well . . ." he let his face fall, become serious. "Let's just pray I never have to deal with anything like that, okay?"

She nodded. "Sure thing, baby."

She sighed and lay back against the pillows. "I don't know what to do. I don't think I'm helping them at all, the kids. Michael . . ." she shook her head. "He's been having nightmares, all night. Waking up crying. Eve was up most the night, painting. Poor thing finally fell asleep on the floor, exhausted. I had to carry her to bed. And Reagan . . . I know that . . . she'll get stir crazy, tense . . . tenser . . . if we keep her cooped up, but . . . all night, patrolling . . ." she sighed. "Sara's freaking out. She spent all day . . ." she considered. ". . . all day yesterday, while Reagan was at school, pacing the house. I don't know what to do for her, I honestly don't. Lexi . . . Lexi seems fine. I don't think she knows what's going on, because . . . she's just being Lexi. Playing with her blocks, taking care of her kitties . . ."

That last part made her feel a little bad. She'd forgotten about the Gryphons' two cats and mongrel puppy until late the previous evening; she'd been making dinner, and Lexi had stormed in the kitchen, arms crossed defiantly over her tiny little chest, eyes narrowed.

"The kitties want in."

"What?"

Her eyes hardened a little more. "The kitties want in, and I can't reach the door."

Upon further investigation, Lexi had fed the puppy that morning, although the bag was too heavy for her. There was spilt kibble all over the laundry room floor.

Mary sighed again, shook her head. It was starting to be too much.

"By the way, Mr. Harris," she murmured after a moment. "Where are _my_ children?"

He smiled. "I dropped 'em off at Giles's for the night, when I went to pick up Michael and Reagan. You can have them back in the morning."

She yawned and stretched her lithe body. "It is morning."

Before she could relax her body from the stretch, he leaned over her, slid his arms around her back, and pressed his lips softly to the concave arch of her stomach. She giggled, coiled back down.

"Mmm . . . Xander."

She looked down at him, ignoring the loose strands of hair in her face, and the deviant grin plastered to his.

He slid his body up hers, met her lips. She sighed, content, closed her eyes and lay back against her pillows. His body molded a cast to hers.

"This is all gonna turn out all right, right, Xander?" she whispered, sliding her arms around her husband.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I hope so, baby . . . I've been praying."

"So have I," she murmured. "So have I."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

Reagan hurried into her room, slamming the door behind her. She was still angry. Livid. This wasn't fair.

"Life isn't fair," she muttered, throwing her jacket to the floor, "Life isn't _fucking_ fair." She kicked her boots off, slid out of her muddy, blood speckled jeans, threw those to the floor. She was sobbing again by the time she got around to squirming out of her tank top. Still crying, she put on a tee shirt and walked to her bed. Her body went limp looking down at her tousled blankets.

Sara was curled up in her bed, white knuckled hands clutching at the sheets, hair mussed, cheeks streaked with tears. Reagan remembered coming home in 8th grade to find Sara just like this, sleeping gently. She'd broken her boyfriend's nose when he decided not to take "no" for an answer. When Sara woke up they'd spent the entire night talking. Reagan had the oddest feeling that was the last time they'd done so; when things were good, they never had anything to talk about.

Reagan sighed, tired and hurt, and crawled into bed next to her sister. She closed her eyes, leaning back on half of her pillow, body aching, heart more so. She was nearly asleep, from tears and pure exhaustion, when the sleeping body next to her shifted the blankets, rustled the sheets.

"Reagan?" tiny voice. Dark eyes looking over at her, scared and large as half dollars.

"Hey." She turned onto her side, faced Sara. "Hi."

Sara cuddled up against her twin, hugged her close. "Are you okay?"

Reagan shook her head, eyes still wet with tears, voice still awfully choked with them. "No."

Sara sniffled, looked like she was going to start crying again. "Me too." She kissed her softly; Reagan ignored the taste of the older girl's tears on her lips. "Go to sleep, Reagan."

There was Sara. Always upbeat, always in good spirits. Even when things were awful, Hellmouths, demons, now this . . . things may be bad now, darling, but . . . everything is absolutely _going to be okay_.

She could almost hear her mother saying it, or Sara, in one of her more elder sister-ish moments. Everything would be okay.

_Life isn't fair, baby._

"Go to sleep," Sara repeated, the way their mother always used to when she didn't have that awful look in her eyes.

Reagan closed her eyes, and slept.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

_Angelus was sitting in the corner when she came in, leaning back in a bare bones wooden chair, arms crossed over his broad chest, legs spread, the weight of the chair and his big body supported on his heels and the outer edge of his feet._

_"Hello there, lass," he murmured, not smiling. His face was hard, cold. Angry. His eyes blazed._

_Darla took another step into the room, not towards him, but to the desk in the middle of the room. She put her tiny, delicately jeweled little purse on the desk, opened it, and removed a small bottle of perfume._

_"What is it?" she asked dully, spritzing herself once with the fragrance. "Are we playing a game?" _

_"I don't believe that you and I are doing anything of the sort," he murmured, voice low._

_She laughed, sprayed him playfully. "Oh, is that it? You want to be the Big Bad?" she laughed again. "Fine." She threw her head back, smiling. Showed off her pale throat and candy shell breasts._

_He stood, slowly, started his way over to her. "Darla."_

_She cupped his face in her hand, trailed her fingers gently down the side of his face, down his throat, his chest. "Darling boy . . ."_

_He grabbed her hand, forcefully. Cuffing her delicate wrist in an iron fist, he moved to the bed with her, pressing his body against her and pushing her to the bed. He looked at her for a long minute before throwing her onto the mattress, letting go of her wrist and using his now free hand to give her a good slap across the face. She gasped, looked up at him with wide eyes._

_"Angelus . . ."_

_"Not enough for you, lass, is that it?"_

_She looked up at him, starting to realize he wasn't wanting kinky sex or power games. "I don't know what you mean." She moaned quietly when her gaze left the man standing over her and lit on the shine of silver in his left hand, half hidden behind his impressive body._

_"Angelus, please . . . just . . . tell me what you mean . . ."_

_"Think I can't smell him on you, do you now?" he paused. "It's one of the benefits of being a demon." At this, he slipped into game face. He growled. She moaned, long and low. "Angelus . . ." _

_When he brought the knife into full view, she started crying. It didn't start slow, then peak . . . abruptly, she started sobbing. begging him through her tears._

_"Please . . . please . . ."_

_He held her down to the bed, raised up her skirt. He drank from her throat while he thrust the knife deep into her, againagainagain, until there was enough blood flowing from between her legs that he could get nourishment from that, instead. _

_When she was too wrecked to scream anymore, and lay there on the bed, crying quietly and trying to get up with what little strength she had left, he could hear the frightened breathing and gentle whimpering cries in the corner. He looked up, and met eyes with Reagan. _

Angel woke up screaming, chest gripped with his frantic panting breaths, choking on his tears.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

If Reagan remembered her actual waking, she would have recalled desperate, piercing screams, breathless sobs, unintelligible bawlings.

When she realized she'd been torn from her dream and was now here, in her bedroom, safe, please god safe, she was in Sara's arms. The beginnings of dawn were peeking from under her curtains. Outside the door, unseen and unnoticed by her, were Mary and Xander, pushed from the room by Sara's insistence.

"It's okay, Reagan, it's okay . . ." Sara was saying over and over, holding her tight, rocking her back and forth like they did Lexi when she was cranky. ". . . it's okay . . ."

Sobbing still, breathing hard, unable to calm down, Reagan didn't struggle against her sister's gentle touch. Instead, she tried to cancel out the terrible screams, the look on her father's face, with the healing chant.

. . . it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay . . .

Everything is going to be all right baby. Everything is going to be all right.

She saw Darla's face as the knife went in the first time.

(Everything is going to be all right.)

Never again.


	5. The Surgery

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
The Magic Box**

Looking at the assembled company, one could almost believe the last twenty years had never happened at all — almost, but not quite. The story was sketched out in the eyes of those seated around the table; the lines of laughter and worry on their faces; the absences in the circle. Besides those, it was the same group that had sat about the Sunnydale High library once: Xander wore a button-up shirt and slacks now, but his grin was the same, if not in evidence at the moment; Cordelia's promise of sophistication had turned into the real thing; Wesley had lost his tie somewhere along the way, and gained a sprinkling of grey hair; Giles had lost his jacket and button-up shirt as well as his tie, but his glasses were thicker, to make up for it; and Willow, who walked wearily into the shop and Xander's arms after the others had been seated, was barely recognizable by her clothing, but her eyes were the same.

Two absences were especially notable; were Buffy and Angel there, they would, perhaps, have looked the most like their old selves, though they'd changed the most.

"You made it," Giles murmured, embracing Willow as she pulled away from Xander. She hugged him back, tightly, and kissed his cheek. 

"Just now," she agreed, pulling away and turning to greet Wesley and Cordelia. "I caught a taxi from the airport." To their questioning glances she explained, "Tara went to pick up Chloe. They're going to go over to the house, try and help Mary."

"We have about an hour before we should . . . go to the hospital," Wesley sighed. Willow nodded and dropped into a seat, exhaustion etched into every line of her body.

"How long was your flight?" Xander asked.

"Oh . . . ten hours?" Willow guessed. "Something like that."

"Did you sleep?" Cordelia asked. No one really cared, least of all Willow; it was something to say, so they wouldn't ask about the things they didn't want to know.

"Not really. Tara did, a little."

"Small blessings," Giles murmured. Willow nodded, locking her fingers together and then unlocking them.

"How's Buffy?" she asked finally. They all exchanged glances, as if they were teenagers still, looking for an answer from an adult.

"She's . . . bad," Xander said finally. "She's unraveling."

"I'll go over there once . . ." Willow trailed off, and then looked to Cordelia, recollecting the reason for this meeting. "You had a Vision."

Cordelia nodded, relieved that they'd found a purpose, a safe topic of conversation. Something they could solve. "There were three . . . things. They had no eyes, there were symbols sewn there . . . X's maybe? They were chanting." 

"Some kind of spell then," Xander sighed. 

"Probably. I've, uh, been looking for any reference to things without eyes but . . ." Giles waved one hand a little helplessly and they all nodded in understanding.

"It sounds familiar," Willow murmured, glancing up from her interlaced fingers. "There's just . . . something familiar . . ."

"Yeah, I get that feeling too," Xander agreed. "It's right on the edge of my mind . . ."

"I agree," Giles sighed. "But I can't . . . Perhaps I should look through my diaries. We may have seen something similar . . ." 

"How long is the surgery?" Cordelia asked suddenly. Silence answered her as the occupants of the room were suddenly struck with what was about to occur.

"I believe it's expected to be upwards of . . . oh, ten hours . . ." Giles replied finally, taking off his glasses and laying them on the table in front of him.

"Who's staying with the kids?" Willow asked.

"We'll take turns. We, uh . . . someone should stay with Buffy though." Willow gazed at her oldest friend and nodded finally, exhaustion replaced by determination in her eyes. "I'll stay with her. She'll . . . I'll stay with her." 

"You don't have to take on that responsibility Willow," Giles essayed. "I'd be happy to . . ." 

"No, no, it should be someone who . . ." Willow offered him an apologetic smile before continuing. "I'm her best friend. I'll do it."

"If you're sure you're up to it," Wesley conditioned. Willow nodded, offering him a tiny smile as well.

"This is my resolve face." 

Xander squeezed her hand; Wesley's arm slipped around Cordelia.

"What were we talking about?" Xander asked.

"My Vision," Cordelia sighed. "It's . . . it was pretty freaky. Those guys are . . . well, they're not up to good. It was dark. I think they're maybe underground somewhere?" 

"I'll see if there's any disturbance in the sewers," Willow offered, then glanced at her watched, realizing what the rest of her day was going to look like.

"We can ask Chloe," Xander offered. "She'll be happy to help." Willow nodded, unhappy about bringing her daughter into it but . . . well, she'd been born into it, hadn't she? If she'd wanted a sheltered child, she never should have had one.

"Yeah, okay. If I don't see her, will you give her a kiss for me?"

"I promise."

Silence drifted over them again, like an old friend. Their minds were elsewhere; on their children, or their friend who had been human so many years and yet had never seemed subject to human ailments. Until now.

The phone rang, startling them all. Giles hurried to get it, answered for the Magic Box; relaxed infinitesimally when he heard the voice on the other end.

"Elly," Willow guessed, scrutinizing the Watcher. He looked a little younger than he had a moment before; a little more vulnerable.

"Yes," he was saying, "they're going to put Angel under in about an hour . . . Mm-hmm, we're all here. About to head over, give him our best wishes before he goes in . . . Of course I will . . . Thank you for calling . . . How, how are you? . . . Oh, good . . . I'm . . . I'll call you when it's over."

"Elly," Xander agreed. Eleanor Woodbridge, Giles's longtime girlfriend was living in England; she taught at Oxford, and came to California most summers.

"No, no, you needn't . . . love, you should enjoy your Christmas . . . I'm sure . . . I'm fine, I promise . . . Yes, I should be going . . . I love you." When Giles hung up his eyes were shining a bit too brightly, but everyone pretended not to notice.

"I'll, um, look in my old diaries," he said, moving back to the topic of Cordelia's vision.

"Right. I'll search for demons without eyes. Or perhaps a kind of Seer?" Wesley suggested.

"Might want to cross-reference with Christmas stuff," Willow suggested. "Around this time of year, there's usually a reason for activity like that…" 

Silence. "Reagan had a nightmare this morning," Xander said into the absence of a safe topic. "She woke up screaming."

They paused, each one imagining their own child that way, hearing the screams of their almost-daughter. 

"Let's go," Willow said, standing up. "We're meeting them there, right?"

"To say goodbye to Angel," Xander agreed, then stopped, realizing what he'd just said. "I meant . . . good luck. To say good luck." 

Cordelia closed her eyes and Wesley's arm tightened around her shoulders. "Let's go," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her hair.

The company was the same as it had been so long ago; the people were the same; but the silence was much, much louder. 

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"I don't know if I can do this," Buffy whispered, looking at her husband for a long time.

He smiled a little, leaning back comfortably in his battered foldable chair in the hospital bathroom, or leaning back as comfortably as one can in a folding chair. "You've done it before. You know how."

She looked down at the razor in her hands, quiet, unsure. "I guess," she said doubtfully, tapping the razor in the palm of her right hand absently. She sighed, moved very close to him, touched his face, then his pale throat, gently. "Okay . . ." Setting the razor down on the sink directly behind her, she took the can of shaving cream easily into her hand, then sprayed a steady stream of foam into the palm of her hand, dipped the first three fingers of the other hand into it, and began to gently apply it to his face, neck. He murmured quietly, pivoted his head, arched his neck in accordance to where her fingers happened to be. That done, she touched the blade to his face, stopped talking to concentrate on the task at hand.

"How long has it been?" he asked, quietly, lips moving almost imperceptibly. A lot of movement was not exactly wise – not right now – all things considered.

"How long has what been?" she asked, a little bit distractedly. She was both focusing on not cutting him and concentrating on keeping her emotions in check.

He kept himself from smiling while she ran the cool double blades down the sloped plane of his jaw. "Since you gave me a shave. How long has it been?"

She considered, but didn't actually give it a great deal of concentration. There were other demands on her person. "Oh, I don't know. Um . . . when you came back from Hell?"

"That was the first time."

She wiped the froths of shaving cream that had accumulated on the implement on the towel slung over his shoulder. "Oh, right . . . um . . . oh. I know. When you broke your wrists."

He closed his eyes, thought. "God, that's right, isn't it? How long has that been?" 

"Sixteen years," she murmured, wiping off the razor again. She considered her handiwork, and then continued.

"Sixteen years," he mumbled, stretching out the first word. "We've really been together sixteen years?"

"No, Angel," she replied quietly, ignoring the fact that he'd brought all of this up, and was pressing it, to try to ease the tension from her. "We've been married for sixteen years. Almost seventeen, actually. We've been together a bit longer . . ."

"Twenty . . . twenty-one years." He paused. "Is that right?"

"Sounds about right to me." She sounded tired. He frowned. "You all right, baby?"

"I'm just tired."

"Hmm." 

"You wanna . . . keep this . . . ?" She tapped once above his lip. He'd worn a meticulously cut moustache and a small goatee that curved the rounded planes of his face for years now.

"Yeah." 

She paused, looked at it. "I don't think that I can . . ."

"Sure you can, baby."

She frowned and sprayed a little more shaving cream in the palm of her hand, tapped the first two fingers of the opposite hand into the lather, and gently applied it around the hair. He was about to say something, but he let her do it her way. She finished, wiped the razor, started over to the sink to clean it off. While she was turning away from him, he reached out, traced the curve of her hip; then he turned his left hand wrist up, and cupped her small, rounded buttocks in his hand briefly. She favored him with a brief smile, then turned back to the sink, grabbed a clean towel and wiped his face, then offered him a small hand mirror. "What do you think?"

He smiled. "Perfect." It was. She'd done a good job. "Are you ready to . . . do the rest?"

Her face fell. No. More than that. _She_ fell. Her aura wavered, her face, posture, soul fell a couple notches. She shook her head. "No. I can't."

He sighed. "Yes, you can. Please. I don't want the doctor to do it."

She didn't say anything, but her lower lip quivered a little. So did his heart.

"Buffy. Please."

She sniffled, wiped a shine from her eyes with the sleeve of her – his – well worn, long sleeved Sunnydale U sweatshirt. "Okay." He closed his eyes and leaned back into his chair, relaxed. He could hear her behind him. He didn't need the visual to know what she was doing: shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot, clenching and unclenching her fists, biting her lip like there was no tomorrow.

Finally, he heard her pick up the can, the razor, a towel. She folded the latter in half lengthwise, wrapped it gently around his neck. She held the former two in either hand, looking down at them, at him, but not moving. She couldn't do this. This made everything too cement. Too real.

_This isn't happening,_ she thought to herself. Out loud, she said: "It'll grow back."

"I know that," he said dully. She didn't understand why he wasn't freaking out about this. This was . . . so big. But he didn't. He never did. He was never weak. He never betrayed his emotions.

Damn him. 

"Go on then," he said quietly, in the low, sweet voice he used just with her. Buffy voice.

She started crying when she shook the shaving cream can, brought more lather into her hand. She stopped when the last of his dark hair was on the floor, and he was turned in his chair, his eyes back on her.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?"

It was. Since she'd woken up this morning, she'd felt the weight of the day before her on her chest. Angel had woken up screaming, sobbing, inconsolable. Doctor Hughes and a myriad of nurses had rushed in, held him to the bed while he gasped for breath, body racked with shivers, and sedated him. He'd laid there for a while before falling asleep, rendered almost catatonic by the drugs, crying quietly to himself. He hadn't wanted to talk, then. He'd just wanted to be held, and she'd done that. When he woke up again an hour later, he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was that had upset him in the first place. So he said.

Hughes had told them about the operation, what was going to happen, how long it was going to take. He let Angel shower in a bathroom down the hall. Buffy helped, at the doctor's insistence. Angel needed supervision, Dr. Hughes had said. He'd had a seizure. Just a precaution.

And now this. She was crumbling quickly, and what was more, she knew it.

Beyond that, she had to keep it from Angel. He had enough on his mind without having to worry about her.

"We . . . we should get you back to the room, sweetheart," she whispered, not answering his question. He didn't seem to take notice, or if he did, he didn't say anything. He started to stand, shakily. Noticing his faltering, Buffy slid her arms around his chest, hugged him close to her, helped him back down the hall to his room.

"I love you," he whispered. Her body tensed a little. "Angel."

"I do."

"Don't." 

He was quiet until he was back in the room and back into his hookups. "Buffy . . ."

She sat on the edge of the bed, straightening the sheets despite the fact that they didn't need it. "Yes."

"I love you."

She closed her eyes, then opened them up again. Stared at him imploringly. "Don't." 

"Buffy."

Sharply: "Yes."

Him, quietly, evenly: "I love you."

Tears ran down her tan cheeks. "Don't. Please don't."

He took her hands in his, held them tight, warmly, imagining that he was warming her heart, too. "I love you."

Then, all of a sudden, breaking, coming apart at the seams, in his arms, sobbing. "Oh, Angel . . . IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou . . . oh, baby . . . I love you . . ."

He held her, nuzzling her neck, kissing her, embracing her for everything he was worth. 

"Everything is going to be all right, baby . . ." he soothed into her hair. "Everything is going to be all right." 

"Oh, please God," she prayed aloud, against him, into him, letting him absorb everything. He could do anything. He was Superman. "Please . . ." _Please don't die._

"Shh, shhh . . . everything's going to be all right . . ."

**Fall, 2000  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

_It was possible to visualize the tumor completely, which means I was able to get all of it. So, barring complications in recovery . . . I think your mother's going to be fine._

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Everything's going to be all right . . ."

It was her line; she knew it was. Her job to soothe, to tell him that he was going to be okay, everything would be fine. It was her line, but she couldn't say it. Couldn't even believe it. She'd believed it once before.

But she let him keep saying it. Even echoed it silently, like a talisman against the evils of the world.

_Everything is absolutely going to be all right._

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

They couldn't all fit in the room; the crowd trailed into the hall, those with less stake in the proceedings pushed toward the back. Inside the room concentric circles shifted, overlapped — first the children, then close friends, children of friends, friends of children . . . 

"We've not had so many since . . . when _was_ the last time we had this many?" Lauren Whitaker, one of the assisting surgical technicians, murmured to Doctor Kearns. 

"Probably that grandmother last . . . no, two months ago. Or three?" the anesthesiologist replied, checking equipment. They looked as one through the window into the room where their next patient waited. A little girl of four or five was perched on the bed with him, talking solemnly. On the other side, a tired blond held tightly to his hand, as if afraid to let go. Doctor Kearns sighed; he'd seen it before. To him, it was just another sedation. To the people in that room, it was life or death, hope or despair.

"And the last one thumps when I shake it," Lexi concluded, treating her father to a rendition of the noise.

"What do you think it is?" Angel asked, his free hand reaching for his youngest daughter's face, smoothing over the curve of her cheek. Lexi cocked her head, pretending to consider for her father's sake. She already knew what it was; she knew what all of them were. That was all right, she still enjoyed opening them. "A doll," she said, and watched her father's eyes light with triumph that she hadn't guessed it right (it was a wooden boat he'd carved). 

"Maybe . . ."

Lexi bobbled on her perch, bumped by one of many bodies crushed into the room and Eve made an immediate noise of contrition, muttering that someone had bumped her. Lexi shook her head. "S'okay. My turn's over." She bent and kissed her father's cheek, softly. "Don't be scared Daddy," she whispered, bent close. "She can't hurt you." 

His eyebrows drew together, puzzled, as she pulled away, but before he could asked for an explanation Lexi had lifted her arms to someone in the crowd and been pulled away, disappearing into the throng.

"Excuse me," Kearns said clearly, pushing his way through the gathered family. "I'm sorry, but I've got to get through . . . No, you're fine . . ."

The blonde woman gestured, gathering a ten year old boy and twin teenagers to her and a path suddenly cleared. The doctor appeared at the patient's head, and tried to ignore the stares of the assembled company.

"I'm going to start the prophylaxis and anesthetic drips now, Mr. Gryphon," Doctor Kearns said quietly to the patient (his first name, if Kearns recalled, was Angel . . . it had caught his attention . . . odd name . . .) "In a few minutes I'll start the gas, and at that point you'll lose consciousness."

"Do we have to leave now?" the blonde woman — Mrs. Gryphon, Kearns had met her once a bit earlier — asked anxiously. Doctor Kearns shook his head.

"No, no, not at all. In fact, it might be calming if you continued to talk to Mr. Gryphon. Just pretend I'm not here."

She nodded uncertainly, and turned to gaze at her husband's face, her hand tightening around his. He gazed back with an intensity rarely seen, even by an anesthesiologist, used to seeing people at their most desperate. Pray To God, and maybe you'll get through this . . . He turned to do his job, quietly, unobtrusively, and listened to the man he was about to kill.

"Are you ready?" Cordelia asked anxiously, peeking between Eve and Michael. Angel smiled at her, no doubt amused to find that she was just as perfectly made up as always. She hid her fingernails . . . they were chipped, uneven, a testament to her distraction.

"I'll be fine." She summoned a smile to meet his, and tried not to show how disturbing it was to see him without hair. For twenty years she'd made fun of his obsession with his hair, of the sheer quantity of gel he put in . . . and then it was gone, in a moment. She knew she wasn't doing a very good job — tact had never been her strong point. "Say it," he urged suddenly. Her smile turned genuine, sad . . .

"You look like a bald egg," she offered, and felt Wesley's arm tighten around her, not in censure, or scolding, but in support, or looking for it, because she knew her husband and she knew he was about to cry.

**Fall, 2000   
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Well, just think of it this way," Buffy continued cheerily. "You'll get to wear all sorts of new fun plastic hair until it grows back."

Joyce smiled wanly. "I guess you're right . . ."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"It's kind of cool," Reagan tried, not entirely lying. One of her fingers twisted thoughtlessly around a dark curl, the hair he'd given her . . . well, them. Her other hand was caught by her sister, tightly, whether for her benefit or Sara's, she didn't know. 

"Yeah," Sara piped in. "You can start a new fad at school."

"The badness will come when it starts growing back," Reagan said, beginning to get into it, into anything that would distract her from his eyes, which were the same and so, so, so, _so_ different, so incredibly different, it wasn't him, it wasn't true and it _was_ . . . "You'll look like a redneck."

"And then we'll have to disown you," Sara finished, smiling brightly. She was good at this lying stuff, the whole pretending-to-be-okay. If one didn't look to closely, it would be easy to miss the overly bright shade of her eyes, or the too-intense color in her cheeks. Reagan was another story . . . she'd seen herself in the mirror and hadn't even been able to look. She looked like she was dead.

She wanted to be dead. If death was peace and life was seeing . . . seeing _that_, watching her beloved father who was really a monster go off to be cut up while she could do nothing . . . She would rather be dead. 

**Fall, 2000  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Of course I'm right," she answered, smiling and being the ray of sunshine she knew it was important to be. This would be okay. 

Everything would be okay.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"Sorry to interrupt," Doctor Hughes said, sliding through the crowd. Conversation stopped immediately, as if it was a living thing, suddenly sliced in two by a scalpel. Kearns looked up from the monitors and Hughes nodded at him. "Let's get moving, hmm?" Kearns nodded back, in acknowledgement. Dream time.

"Okay, Mr. Gryphon, we're going to put you under now. Some people find this a little startling, but if you just breath normally, you'll be fine," Kearns soothed, the same words he'd used a thousand times. He tried not to sound monotonous about it. He'd heard it a thousand times; they hadn't. Some of them it didn't matter; they weren't frightened. Some of them seemed to welcome oblivion. Others . . . well, it hit everyone differently. "I'm going to put this mask over your nose and mouth, and you'll breath into that. Understand?"

"It . . . it's just like going to sleep, right?" Mrs. Gryphon asked anxiously. Kearns nodded reassuringly.

"That's exactly what it's like. Nothing to be frightened of, I assure you."

**Fall, 2000  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"And . . . I'll just wake up, and everything will be over?" Joyce asked. The anesthesiologist smiled. "Yes, ma'am. Just like nothing happened at all."

"Just like going to sleep?" she questioned, echoing his words of a few moments ago.

"Just like that," he agreed.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"See?" Buffy whispered, her free hand running over his smooth head, cradling him closer. "You're just going to go to sleep, and when you wake up I'll be here." 

"Okay," Angel agreed, nodding his head. Just going to sleep . . . He remembered what his last try at sleep had brought him, and his eyes slid to Reagan, who looked like a ghost, watching him with the same look in her eyes as she'd watched in the dream, while he relived those actions, those terrible . . . God, if anyone ever deserved something like this, it was him. He'd been waiting for the other foot to fall since he'd married Buffy. Waiting for someone to remember his punishment. Was this it, finally?

He didn't want to go to sleep.

"Are you ready?" the anesthesiologist — Doctor Kearns? — asked.

"No!" Angel exclaimed involuntarily. Kearns and Hughes exchanged a look and Angel looked back to Buffy, to the red rims of her eyes, the familiar odd flip of her nose, the way her tangled hair fell over her cheeks, her throat. He swallowed whatever welled in his throat and rasped, "I love you. Remember that if . . ."

"Shh," she commanded, silencing him, an air of desperation in her voice. Angel noticed Willow just behind her, a hand on Buffy's shoulder and nodded at the redhead. She nodded back, in acknowledgement: _I'll take care of her while you can't._

"Okay," he heard his voice say. "I'm ready."

**Fall, 2000  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"all right, Mrs. Summers, this'll only take a minute . . . you might feel some slight discomfort, but don't worry, just breathe normally, and everything will be all right . . ."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Kearns placed the mask over Mr. Gryphon's face gently, with the air of long practice, and took the man's bandaged right hand in his, guided it on top of the mask. "You just hold that there, all right?" Obediently, he curved his fingers around the bell of the mask, mirroring the action with his other hand, giving his wife's fingers a squeeze. Kearns studied him briefly. His eyes were already dilated a little, from nerves or lack of sleep. He didn't appear to be overly frightened, though he was certainly not upbeat about the process. Kearns jotted a few notes about Mr. Gryphon's stats — heart rate, blood pressure — on the chart, and then slowly turned the knob that controlled the gas, watching for signs of trouble.

It never hurt to be pessimistic in this field; too often, it made all the difference.

**Fall, 2000  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Resignedly, Joyce leaned back in her hospital bed and prepared for sleep.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

At first, he could hardly tell anything was happening at all. They'd elevated his head, and as a result he could see all around the room, the gazes of all the concerned onlookers. He counted his children off in his head, trying not to think about the faint taste in his mouth—not quite pure oxygen—Eve, pale and determinedly brave; Reagan and Sara, both pale, one deathly, the other too bright; Michael, burrowed beside his eldest sister, watching with wide eyes; and Lexi . . . where had Lexi gone? Angel caught a glimpse of her hair through the crush. Someone was holding her. There was Cordelia, and Willow, behind Buffy, with Tara beside her, and Chloe resting her head on her second mother's shoulder. Wesley and Cordelia stood on the other side, Julianna behind them. Xander and Mary were at the end, their children towards the outside of the room, playing with Chloe and Reagan's boyfriends. Giles stood beside Willow, near to Buffy, his hands deep in his pockets; his glasses tucked away somewhere, as if he didn't want to see.

Was that all? He was missing someone . . . someone was there but he couldn't name them . . .

The taste got stronger, just a little stronger, and so did the feeling he was missing someone. Who was holding Lexi? No, this definitely wasn't air he was breathing, there was something wrong with it, and he could hear the doctor speaking to him as if from a long way away.

"No," he whispered, lifting his hand and the mask with it. He'd not gotten all the edges away from his face before Kearns' hand was atop his, lifting it from the mask, and then the anesthesiologist's hand heavy over the mask, the mask back on his face. "Just breathe regularly," he kept saying, "just breathe regularly."

Angel tried . . . tried, but every breath was harder, different, as if the air was being sucked away from him, and oh god, the smell, it was overpowering suddenly, like he was drowning in black, smothered, sinking . . . pounding in his head and a hurt, a tightness in his chest . . .

His eyes, darting around, searching for help, for solace, found black. Darla smiled, her arms tightening around Lexi's small body and Angel tried to scream, to warn them, but he couldn't breath, couldn't think, he was falling couldn'tbreathecan'tbreathecan'tscreamcan'tbreathe . . .

"Go!" Buffy wasn't exactly sure how she managed to say it, but she did, and everyone stood there, frozen. "Please, just . . . he needs to calm down . . ."

Someone understood finally, and began shepherding them out, eyes still fixed on the twitching, slowly, screaming body. Buffy seized his hands, turned his head to face her, desperate, pained.

"What's wrong?" she asked the anesthesiologist, who didn't seem alarmed enough. Angel was _screaming_. Only he couldn't, he looked like he couldn't breathe . . . Buffy's heart stopped and started again when he looked at her, finally, and saw her. Where had his eyes been? She'd lost them. Lost him for a moment . . .

"It's a little frightening to be put under. If he doesn't calm down, I can ease up, but it'd be best to get this over with as quickly as possible." 

Buffy nodded, a purpose in mind now, a goal seized upon, as she seized upon his gaze, his soul, and held it. The one thing she could do now . . .

"Listen to me baby," she pleaded. "You have to calm down. It's okay; I promise it is. I'll take care of everything . . . I'll take care of everything . . . You just go to sleep, and when you wake up I'll be here, and things will be better, I'll be right here waiting for you, don't you worry. Everything's going to be just fine . . . you'll see . . . I love you so much, baby, you have to calm down, you have to just sleep now, for a little while. I'll keep you safe. I'm good at that, you know. It's what I do. I promise I'll keep you safe . . ."

She didn't know what she was saying, except that it was true, in some small way; it was a stream of consciousness, of unconscious words that meant she loved him; it would be all right. Not the words she wanted to say; not the screams she needed to utter. The dam still held all that back, thankfully. This was all that was let through; supportive, sweet, comforting. _Everything will be all right._

"I love you . . . I love you . . ." He was breathing normally again, though less and less. His eyes were beginning to relax, squeeze shut peacefully, and the terror there had changed to something else, equally terrible, but hers now . . . fear that he would not wake, not that she wouldn't be there to hold him when he did . . . no doubt of that, no fear there, only love . . . His eyes started to drift shut, and his lips formed a word . . . her name.

Her words were babbling suddenly, for her own sake, not his, a litany of pretend. "You'll be fine, you'll be back, I'll be right here when you wake up, it'll all be okay, I love you . . . It'll be fine . . ."

Didn't want to go; didn't want to let go. Lose control. Slip into the unknown. The unknown was where terrible things happened; where he relived a life he'd screamed himself through, inside. Don't go back; don't let the dark come . . .

But her voice was soothing, and sweet, and how could he fight the love there? So he let the dark come, let it swallow him . . . Didn't want to leave her, but she said he had to . . . Didn't want the black, but it came anyway, laughing, to eat him alive . . .

His last thought was not of the darkness but of her, of her light, and his last word was her name, an appeal for her to save him.

"Is he okay?" Willow asked, stepping into the caravan as it passed; Buffy, clinging with white knuckles to Angel's hand and the metal edging of his hospital bed; two doctors, a nurse; the anesthetics equipment, keeping him unconscious; the bed, where Angel slept. They walked past the massed group, now in the waiting room — Willow cast one look back at Tara as she went, shamefully glad this wasn't her wheeling down this hall.

"I got him calmed down," Buffy replied quietly, not looking over.

"His vitals are good," the anesthesiologist reported and Willow nodded, relieved, one hand brushing Angel's head where all that beautiful hair had been . . . Buffy had shaved it, one of the children had reported to her. Willow tried to imagine what that had felt like, and failed. She didn't really want to know.

"How long will the operation be?" Willow asked, not sure whether they'd gone over this earlier or Buffy just didn't have the heart to ask.

"We don't really know until we get in there," Doctor Hughes admitted. "But it will probably be over eight hours. You might want to send the kids home."

"We're going to," Willow agreed. Buffy looked a little surprised. Had no one told her? They'd all agreed to take shifts with the kids, back at the Gryphons' house. Willow felt a pang of guilt for not asking Buffy if she wanted them around, but then a faint expression of relief crossed the Slayer's face and Willow relaxed. She'd known immediately that was the best thing to do; Buffy couldn't handle kids right now. She'd feel like she had to take care of them, and if Willow wasn't off the mark, she was barely taking care of herself at the moment.

"Here we are," Hughes said, gently detaching Buffy's hand and catching her eyes. "Don't worry, we'll take good care of him." Buffy nodded numbly, her hand clenching around itself as if trying to still hold on to the warmth of his hand. The door opened, Angel slid through and was gone as the doors closed again. Willow counted to three and then reached out to catch Buffy before she collapsed to the floor.

It all came rushing out at once, as if the doors to the operating room had been floodgates, opening instead of closing, releasing all the pain and horror and despair that had been waiting for just such an opportunity. Vaguely, Buffy realized that Willow was with her, was holding her. It . . . helped, a little. Not much. She loved Willow beyond life, but no one was Angel, no one could make it better, no one could give Buffy back her life . . . his life . . .

And no one, ever, could make her believe it was going to be all right. 

They limped together to the bathroom, like survivors of a war, and Buffy slip to the floor there, pressing her body against the cool tile of the wall, as if it could still her shaking. "They said they would fix her too," she whispered, closing her eyes against the worry and pain in Willow's. "But they didn't. They didn't fix her. And they won't be able to fix him . . . what if they can't fix him? I can't, Will, I can't do it without him, not any of it. I don't _want_ to do it without him. Oh God, Will, he can't leave me, he _can't_. Not now. I'm not ready yet; I'm not . . . he's supposed to outlive me; he was always supposed to outlive me, it was a deal. I would die first, I'm the Slayer; he can't leave me now, I can't go on, I need him, I need him so much and they said they would fix him, but they couldn't fix her, she was just starting over and it was all a lie, it wasn't okay, it was never going to be okay and it's never, never, _never_ going to be okay again . . ."

The words were ugly, dark, jagged tears from her heart. Each one true, said so many times in the privacy of her mind, but never aloud, because they might be true, they couldn't be true . . . And then words ceased, not because they'd all been said, but because she was crying so hard none of them could get out anymore. Her body was heaving, her eyes streaming with the intensity of despair; she had never felt anything like this, never allowed herself to hurt so much . . . She had lost so many things, but never him, she couldn't stand to lose him . . . He was her world, her life, and they were cutting him open to save him, but what if it didn't save him . . . There was nothing she could do, no one she could fight, no way for her to help him except to smile and be strong, and pretend it would be all right when her entire soul was screaming . . . Everything was screaming . . .

"It isn't the same," Willow promised. "Angel is not your mother. Treatment is better now. They _will_ save him."

Buffy heard. She listened. But she couldn't hope. Because if she hoped, if she believed for one moment, really believed he would be safe, and he _wasn't_ . . .

**Winter, 2000  
Summers' Home**

"I mean, there was a tumor," Buffy explained, watching them put a tube down her mother's throat. A tube. Down her throat. Would that . . . would that help? It had to help . . . her mind balked at the thought. It would. Had to. "A brain tumor, but she had an operation and she's fine now. She, she's been fine."

She'd been fine. Everything was fine . . . why were her eyes open like that? Why was she cold? Everything was fine . . .

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

It was frightening, the way Buffy shook. Perhaps she'd blocked it out, but Willow could not remember a time when she'd seen Buffy so upset. Perhaps Buffy had always hidden it better, only this time she couldn't hide anymore. This was _Angel_.

Willow tried to imagine what she would be doing if this was happening to Tara, and could not. Add what had happened to Joyce . . . Willow had always thought that in books, when they said one person's tears had soaked another's clothing, they'd been exaggerating. They hadn't been.

It was frightening, because Buffy had always been strong, but Willow was glad for it too. Buffy couldn't _always_ be strong. No one could. But the one person Willow knew she had always felt safe being weak with was the one person that needed her to be strong at that moment. The strain had to be mind-numbing. So, disturbing as it was, Willow thanked the Goddess that Buffy could cry, right there in the hospital bathroom, clutched tightly in her best friend's arms. It might be the thing that kept her sane.

It was frightening, but Willow would have been far more scared if Buffy had not shed a tear. So she held on, and prayed, because that was all there was to do.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**/ 0:02 before Surgery: OR /**

"How're his vitals?"

"Had a little trouble while we were putting him under, but he's stabilized."

"So we're go?"

"I wanna keep the anesthesiologist here to watch him, just in case, but I think we're fine."

**/ 0:04 into Surgery: Buffy /**

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe, and I can't feel anything, can't make the room focus. It's like I'm not even here, like I'm watching everything from underwater.

I wonder if he's dreaming. 

**/ 0:18 into Surgery: Lexi /**

"Lexi, you're going to have to be reasonable about this . . ."

I don't want to talk to Her. I know She's not good. Everybody whispers black about Her. Everybody knows.

I put my hands over my ears. "Go away!"

She just raises an eyebrow and smirks, but She does leave when Eve comes in the room. She looks concerned. "Everything okay, Lex?"

She's giving off red. I see that kind of heat around only her, because of her demon blood. Daddy taught her how to control it, but I can still see it when she's upset. It's the color of raw strawberries now, hot like the sun even from here.

"Are you okay?" she says again, because she thinks I didn't hear her the first time. There's hurting, in her voice, and when she speaks, the red cools to yellow for a minute.

"Yes."

She doesn't look like she believes me, but she looks away and the yellow fires to red again as she leaves. She shuts the door, and She comes back.

"It's funny for you to be afraid of her," I say, and She looks angry. She doesn't give off a color. Not a new one. Only just black, like they whisper about Her.

"I'm not afraid of her."

But She is. She's afraid of all of them, because She's afraid that everything won't go perfectly, that they'll mess things up. Well, they might.

**/ 0:22 into Surgery: Willow /**

I find myself remembering things: how Angel used to show up in his leather coat and say a couple cryptic things and I always thought he was cute and he and Buffy were meant for each other. How it was obvious right from the beginning. The look on his face the first time he saw the twins. The way he was a second father to all our kids, and because that wasn't enough, as if he had more adoration than children to adore, he became a teacher. How he never seemed to believe that everything was as good as it was.

And maybe it wasn't.

I find myself remembering the last time we sat here, like this. The pain was so raw then. I'd hurt before, but when Joyce died . . . oh, what I felt was nothing compared to what Buffy went through, but it was still . . . something. All of a sudden she was gone, this part of my life. More of a mother, in some ways, than mine.

I find myself imagining life without Angel, and then I remember Buffy is sitting here and I am supposed to be helping her. But there is no help for that.

I want to curl my arms around her, but she's always been untouchable when she's hurting. 

**/ 0:34 into Surgery: Chris /**

I think maybe I should touch her or something, but I don't. She's sitting away from me, next to me, yeah, but in a way that I know she doesn't feel like she's with me.

"Reagan."

She doesn't look at me, but she kinda turns her head a little, acknowledging that I'm here, maybe. Knowing that I'm here? Maybe that's enough, that she knows. I don't know.

"What." It doesn't sound like a question. Sometimes she talks like she doesn't have emotions, like she doesn't feel. I kinda get scared when she does that, cuz I don't have anything that connects me to her anymore, I'm not sure that we're even the same species. She gets like that and I feel like I'm with Warrior, Slayer, not my girlfriend, not my Reagan. It scares me, the kind of fear that you can't fix.

"Is there . . . anything I can do? Maybe, do you want to talk about this?"

"You have no idea." There's emotion, there, but I'm not sure that it makes me feel any better. She sounds like she's going to cry, like she's going to break, and I don't know if I can deal with that. She's never done it before, and I don't know how to help her, how to make it right.

I go for it, and touch her. Put my hand on her shoulder, pull her back against me, so that she fits against me and just falls into my hug. "I have no idea about what, baby?"

She feels cold and leaden in my arms all of a sudden, as though she could transform from soft, warm, living girl to hard icy steel at will, and felt that now was a good time to showcase her talents. "About . . . I can't."

"Reagan, I . . ."

"Get off me." And all of a sudden, she's crying, her too pale face in her hands, shaking in my arms, harder than a seismic jolt, steel then soft steel then soft, making half gasp half moaning noises and just shaking . . . I tighten my arms around her, trying to calm her, trying to give her something solid and sure and there . . .

"Get _off_ of me." I don't know where she got that voice. It's low and dark and primal and I can't imagine it ever pairing with her face, coming out of those soft perfect lips.

Apparently, I didn't move fast enough. Before I know it, she stands more quickly than any human can, and I'm against the wall on the other side of the room, sliding to the floor and landing hard against the wall. She seems farther than I know she is, eyes wide and tears down her cheeks, still shaking, still crying, but quietly, slowly, body stilling to a tiny tremble and eyes so wide . . . her lips tremble, and I can hear her breathe with a harsh gasp. Her arm's still out from throwing me, and her eyes are just huge, and she looks so shocked, so scared . . .

"Chris." She looks at her still extended arm, then draws it in close against her body, like she forgot about it until she saw it. She looks at me, trembling and scared, and starts to come to me, but then stops, shakes, looks like she can't move. "Chris."

I get up, okay, a little shakily, a little pain in my back, and go to her, take her hand, and use that to pull her to me, against me again. She melts, this time, and starts sobbing again.

"I'm so sorry . . . God, I'm so sorry, I . . . I didn't . . ." she stops, looks up at me, extra pale cheeks looking luminescent and not quite real under the rain of tears washing over them. "I'm so scared. And everything's wrong, and . . . and my dad . . ."

She cries, and I hold her, keeping her close and settling with her to the floor when her knees give. My girl.

**/ 0:47 into Surgery: Michael /**

They're trying to distract me, all of them. Uncle Xander and Eve wanted to play Life, but it's a stupid game and anyway, I don't . . .

I want my dad. I know it's stupid and I'm being a kid about this and I should just . . . buck up or something, like everyone else. But I want Dad, and I want Mom to come home. If they were home, maybe I could forget.

Dad never did those things. Dad isn't like that. People are good or they're bad and Dad isn't . . .

I wonder what the surgery is like. I wish Uncle Xander would stop trying to cheer me up. I wonder if he knows . . . Not that there's anything to know. Not that they would tell me if there was. Stupid little Michael. I know they're trying to protect me. Look at them, offering to watch all my stupid movies and play my stupid games. Don't they know it doesn't matter?

Dad didn't do those things. I know he didn't. So why can't he come home?

**/ 1:01 into Surgery: Buffy /**

"I think maybe we'll . . . get s-some food. You know, sugar could . . . s-so we don't get all . . . all shaky and stuff. Do you want anything . . . ? Will? Buffy?" 

"Ooh! Yeah, snack cakes, cuz, you know, the sugar . . . you think they have donuts . . . ?"

After a while, all their talking just fades into itself, and its warm and fluid but far off, like when there's a song you know playing in a radio in the next room. You can't really hear it, but you know that it's there, and what it is, and it's not scary just incomplete.

I don't care.

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care. Me? Not caring.

I just know that I can't breathe, and that I'm having a little trouble feeling inside my body right now. I could give a flying fuck about snack cakes.

God, this isn't me. Sorry, God. Sorry . . . whoever.

And they're all looking at me . . . why are they all looking at me?

"Buffy? Buffy?" 

And everything focuses suddenly, bursting through with bright Technicolor and Panasonic sound. They're looking at me, and they're looking concerned, and they're talking so . . . they must have been talking to me for a long time.

God. I just need this day to be over with.

"Buffy?"

"Yeah. What? Sorry." 

And Tara starts on again, "No, don't be sorry, it's okay . . . we . . . w-we were just w-wondering if there was . . . if you wanted anything to eat," but before she's done asking me, I can hardly hear her again. And I'm drowning again, and I don't know how, and they're all getting further and further away and 

Willow puts her hand on my shoulder and jerks me out of the water. "You should eat something. Keep your strength up."

I'm still a little waterlogged, so it takes a little while to register the words I need to respond to her. "No . . . No."

Great. Concern face. "You need to eat."

"I can't eat," I whisper, and I wanna cry, and why are they all still _looking at me_? "I can't. I won't . . . I don't think I'll be able to keep anything down."

And I do feel like I'm going to start to cry again, and the only thing I want is to be away from here, so they don't see my face streaked with tears and my eyes red and why are they all still looking at me?

Wait. No. These are my friends. I love them, and they love me. They're here to take care of me, and to . . . to be here for me, and for Angel.

God, I'm so sorry . . . I'm sorry, everyone. I don't know what's . . . what's wrong with me.

I just need this to be over with. 

**/ 1:23 into Surgery: Reagan /**

When he touches me, I don't even feel it. Like I'm in a . . . cocoon. Like no one can touch me.

If no one can touch me, then no one can lie. Or is it only physical? Will I still be able to hear, to see . . . everything?

If I stay here, right here, and don't move, then only he will touch me and since he can't really . . . no more lies. No more . . . happily ever afters. No more it'll be better soons. No more he's evils.

He's not evil. He's Daddy. And nothing is going to be okay.

But it doesn't matter. If nothing can touch me then it doesn't matter. Does it? 

**/ 2:08 into Surgery: OR /**

"Suction, please."

"Suction."

"Thank you . . ." 

"Dr. Kearns, how's he doing?"

"Blood pressure and pulse are both strong and stable. Breathing's fine, too, settled down. Should be fine."

"Do you have another appointment?"

"McAllister in twenty."

"I think it's all right if you leave . . . unless you think otherwise."

"I'll send someone to check on him in thirty."

"Suction."

**/ 2:39 into Surgery: Cordelia /**

I'm not good at the patience thing. I've never been good at the patience thing. He knows that. He knows . . . me.

Pull it together Chase. I look over at Buffy — even she is holding it together better than me or . . . no, I don't believe that. She's just not dealing. Not thinking. Maybe that's the way to do it. Forget all that being strong crap. Forget smiling at people and looking perfectly put together. Forget dealing with things as they come at you. Just shut off. It seems to be working for her.

I know it's not really working for her. And it wouldn't work for me either. But it seems preferable to . . . to this. To this pretense that I'm . . . fine.

"Can I go talk to Mom?" Michael asks. I shake my head, not really sure why I volunteered to bring the kids here. We're taking shifts at the house, at the hospital. Let them come for a few minutes if they want, see what's going on — nothing — and then take them home, where they don't have to see it, don't have to smell that godawful, disgusting smell of . . . Wesley told me I shouldn't come. But of course I'm Cordelia Chase (Wyndam-Pryce now, but I can't call myself that . . . even if I always wanted to be a girl with two last names) and no one tells me I can't handle it. I can handle anything.

I don't think I can handle this. He knows that, he would know that. He would take one look at me and tell me to go home.

No, that's not true. He would take one look at me and then he would take me home.

I can handle anything. Anything but this.

**/ 3:56 into Surgery: Willow /**

I feed her like a child, just take one more bite, you'll feel better, really you will. She won't feel better, but the last thing she needs is to get sick. I try and do the little things, because I can't touch the big ones. So I make her eat when she doesn't want to, and bring her water and get her to walk around. It's like having a child, Chloe little again only Buffy doesn't want to curl up in my arms and be comforted, she wouldn't fit in my lap and if I push too hard I know she'll snap. So I don't push. Just a bite now and then, that's all I ask. A word every half hour — that can carry over, if she says five then she can be silent for forty-five minutes. Just . . . something.

Her children come and go and she barely sees them. A child has no concept of anyone outside themselves and their parents — so Giles brought Sara and Lexi and Cordelia brought Michael and Eve and they all went away again, after hovering just out of her sight. She would have tried, had they come nearer. But she has nothing left for herself, much less for them.

I wish she could take comfort in them, if she can't find it in me. If it was anything else, I think she could. But not this. All her strength, all her ability to give or take, all of it is with him.

So I make her eat and drink and walk and talk — just a little, just enough so that we both know she's still alive.

**/ 4:48 into Surgery: Reagan /**

I want to go, to see. Everyone else went I should . . . I feel like I should go. As if somehow I'm being a better daughter if I sit in a white room and wait instead of in our pretty living room which Mom picked the colors for and Dad filled with old, beautiful things.

I hate hospitals, but so does Mom and she's there. Everyone else went.

Sara told me that there was nothing to do there, no reason to go. They didn't even talk to Mom, they didn't want to disturb her. Apparently the same does not go for me; when she came home Sara took it upon herself to sit with me and talk, as if Chris was slacking in his job: keeping me in contact.

Chris is doing a very, very good job. Too good. I want to hide inside him, burrow right into his skin and take up residence. I think I would feel safe there.

I hate how he makes me feel safe; it makes it okay to feel, which I don't want. 

Sara does the same thing, though . . . differently. She came and sat cross-legged beside us and French-braided my hair, ignoring all protestations. Then she insisted Chloe come help, and Julianna and the three of them remembered childhood clapping rhymes I had long since managed to block out of my head. Giles found my guitar and came in, sitting nearby and strumming softly, all the songs he taught me when I was young.

I wanted to scream. What makes them think they can laugh, or play or . . . I didn't want to finish that sentence.

I left the room. Chris followed me. I hate when he does that. And the way he folded me up close to his heart, as close as I could be without being part of him for real and how he made me cry.

I should go. If everyone else was strong enough, I should be too. But I just want to . . . to hide. I just want to hide. 

**/ 5:21 into Surgery: Chris /**

And she's blank canvas again, and I don't know how she does it. I watched her with Sara and Chloe and Jules, and she met my eyes for a second, looking like a deer in the headlights. Help me . . . please help me . . .

But now, there's not even that. There isn't anything, and I don't know if she's even in there, or if she's left her body, gone someplace else a little less painful.

I don't blame her, but it scares me.

"I'm going," she whispers, all of a sudden, and her eyes, her face flood with Reagan again, like maybe she's a machine that can be turned on all at once, all lights going on at the same time.

"Going where?"

"To the hospital," and her voice sounds like something dead.

"Look, you don't have to . . ." because she looks like she'd rather die a thousand times than be back in that building again.

"Yes I do." She stands, and looks back at me with that 'help me' look again. "Don't follow me."

And she goes, and the silence without her hurts so much more than the silence she carries with her.

I don't follow her.

**/ 6: 12 into Surgery: Cordelia /**

It's sick the things people do to themselves. Me included. Mostly me.

Wes told me not to come back, to stay there, help with the kids. I laughed at him. I am possibly the least comforting mother on the face of the planet. Jules told him to let me go, I wouldn't be happy unless I had my way and I certainly wouldn't be happy then.

Teenage children are a nightmare, especially when they're just like you. My God I love her.

So I wait. Here. Willow and I exchange words once in a while, out of desperation or a sense of obligation. I tried to talk to Buffy, but she barely responded, not even seeming to hear me and I'm not in the mood for patience or being ignored.

I take one step, and then another. My shoes tap on the floor and I take another step, testing. Tap. Another. Tap.

I was stupid to come. Should have stayed with Wesley, or let him come. I thought . . . I don't know what I thought. Tap. Tap. If I can do this one thing, if I can make it through these hours and be here then he'll have to . . . Well if he wasn't, I'd know. I'd just . . . I'd know. But if I stay here it's like Murphy's Law. If I'm prepared, nothing will go wrong. But if I'm not here, everything will go wrong.

Not that I really believe that. Tap. But I didn't want to be here so of course I have to be. Like I can finally prove to him and to . . . to me and to everyone that I have changed. I, Cordelia Chase Wyndam-Pryce (three names, even better) am a good person.

He made me that. I want him to know I am that he . . . that he made me that. I want to be that.

**/ 6:43 into Surgery: Lexi /**

She went away after She got upset. I thought She'd come back, but She hasn't. The air is so loud with everyone's buzzing that it hurts, and I can hardly hear anything over it.

Reagan's out hunting, even though it's daytime. Looking for demons, but trying to kill the bad things inside of her.

But she doesn't know that. She will.

"Because she's awake," She says, coming back all of a sudden. All the roaring talk comes to a stop all at once when She enters the room, crowding it with black. Everyone fades to whispers, whispers about Her, whispers of black. "She'll know everything."

"Don't hurt her," I say, even though I know that She will.

She laughs. "Daddy should be done soon."

And then She's gone, and the whispers come back into screaming, but the black doesn't go away for a long time.

**/ 7:26 into Surgery: Michael /**

Stephan's teaching me how to shoot. The angle to cock your wrist at, the amount of force to put behind the ball. I've made three in a row.

"Hey, why aren't you on my team?" he asks with a grin. I've watched his team play, the way they pound across the court, pushing, twisting, finesse and raw power all in one. His team? "I coach at Sunnydale Junior High, you'll be there next year, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well don't forget to try out. You're a natural."

It's because of Mom, I think about telling him. Because she's special. I'm not but I'm still strong, fast. Better than the other kids, just a little.

If Dad was a vampire, then it might be from him. Not that Dad was a vampire.

I don't say anything about it.

"Try again," he urges and I do, winding up and letting go. The ball catches the rim, hovers there for a split second perfectly still. My breath catches — and then it falls. Out, not in. "Next time."

Yeah, next time. Sara comes outside, slipping her arms around Stephan's waist and leaning her head on his shoulder. He's way taller than her, but I know she could beat him up. Or beat him at basketball, probably. She's good at jumping. We used to play, but she always won.

I'll be taller than she is in a few years. But she'll probably still beat me. I want to just . . . be in a normal family for once. Then none of this would be happening.

"You guys having fun?" she asks.

"Your brother's going to be varsity, I can feel it," Stephan said, bending to kiss her. I glance away, a little embarrassed. It's weird thinking of Sara kissing and stuff like that. Especially with Stephan. He's so . . . perfect. Normal. Not like Sara's a freak or anything but . . . it's strange.

"Mmm. The Gryphon genes are strong in him," she teased, walking over to try and give me a nougie. I move away but she catches me. Instead of the punishment she bends and kisses my hair and I freeze. "It's getting dark. Let's go inside."

But I don't want to go inside. Even the dark feels more normal than our house sometimes. Anyway, they'll want me to . . . talk or something. But Sara insists, and Stephan agrees and it kinda worries me that I want to stay outside. Dad would have liked the dark, if he . . .

How much longer will this take?

8:18 into Surgery: Buffy

I can't do anything but think of him. Willow's trying to take care of me, I think, or maybe I'm just imagining that, imagining her trying to coax me into conversation, and Cordelia's pacing, and Xander checking his watch and the clock and his watchandtheclockandhiswatch . . . but I can't see anything but Angel. I remember seeing him the first time, gorgeous in an annoying sort of way, smiling up at me from the flat of his back, "Is there a problem, ma'am?", and then me hating him for a whole second when he reminded me of my duty . . . "I love you" the first time, wet and dangerously close on his bed, voice so choked with emotion I thought he was breaking . . . and the next time, face tear-streaked, crying, still hurting and confused and innocent and so doomed, so dead . . .

A tube. Down her throat. I mean, there was a tumor, a brain tumor, but she had an

operation

and she's fine now, shesbeenfine . . . a tube. Down her throat.

. . . the smell of his skin after making love the first time, his shudder, his gasp, his warmth . . . the smell when he came back from Hell, like dying things . . .

shesbeenfine

. . . and the poison, the smell of that, poisoned sweat sickly sticky cloying smell that made you need to wash and cry because you had sat so close to something that had already started to rot inside . . .

down her throat. an operation.

. . . the way he looked the first time I saw him in the sunlight for real, not a dream, face lit a thousand different ways all at once, and my heart screaming iloveyou . . .

i try not to but i can't stop. close your eyes.

. . . the way he looked in the sun, lit end of the poker yelloworange when we went down to Juarez on Assignment for the Alliance, a favor for Whistler, almost living the old West while hunting demons, his skin lit like that, white cotton man's shirt open and leather holsters around his slim hips, a living cliché breathing cigarette smoke like a dragon lady but so so beautiful . . .

you're even pretty when you go to sleep

. . . at the prom, his arms around me and his eyes avoiding mine because he didn't want to go, he didn't want to leave me but he had to . . .

close your eyes. a tube. down her throat. she had an operation and

. . . when the twins were born, his eyes then, his face, a new kind of light . . . the first time he touched them, their skin, pale like his, marveled at their eyes dark, like his . . .

it's tradition. it's not tradition. it's genetics. you can't have brown eyes by – it's tradition.

you're just so pretty 

. . . and during my first labor, being so good, being so him, his hands wrapped around mine, holding me, keeping me in this reality, whispering into my ear "iloveyoubabyyou'redoingsowelli'msoproudofyouiloveyou" . . . 

i try not to but i can't stop.

. . . the ways his wounds healed shiny when he came back from Hell and how he cried when I touched them. How I couldn't look him in the eyes . . .

close your eyes.

. . . afterwards because I was afraid of the change Hell had given them, the marring and twisting and wrongness in them . . .

she's been fine

. . . and the way they are now and how they crinkle at the edges when he laughs and the way tears track down his face when he cries and the noise he makes . . . 

a tube. down her throat.

. . . when he's crying and the noise he makes when he's coming and "hold me" and "if you're going to the store, could you pick up" and "I'm worried about" and "I need" and "the kids" and "I love you" . . .

close your eyes.

. . . and the way he works his mouth when he's nervous and when he's kissing me and his hands on my back and in my hair and on my breasts and making dinner and holding the kids when they were babies and a sword like a samurai and my heart is in your hands and I love you and there was a tumor but she had an operation but she's better now, she's fine, she's been fine . . .

"Mrs. Gryphon?"

And I'm flat through a stained glass ceiling and I'm back to white, back in the waiting room with the smell of antiseptic and the lights too bright and Willow coaxing and Cordelia pacing and Xander checking the time constantly and Reagan's between my legs, and her head's in my lap and my hands are in her hair and I'm petting her and I didn't even know she was there and there's someone saying my name and

"I'm Mrs. Gryphon."


	6. All I Want for Christmas Is You

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

He didn't look any different. She thought he ought to look different somehow, altered, changed. Like a piece of him should be gone to reflect what they'd cut out. But there wasn't anything, any difference. He was pale, and bandaged, but he wasn't different. Still, it took her a long time to move from her statue stance in the doorway, to move from not and be near him again. Like if she moved, this picture would shatter, and she'd have to deal with the real world, with the differences. Like if she moved, she could lose a part of him, or all of him, could lose something. Just by moving.

"He's fine," he'd said. The doctor. He'd told her this. "He'll be fine."

He'd said lots of other things too, too big medical words like "barring complications," but Buffy didn't hear any of them. She didn't hear anything but "fine. He'll be fine."

She'd pushed aside the weight of echo those words had, any other times she'd heard them, and took them in her arms, bundled them up close to her heart and didn't let go. She let the words reverberate against the walls of her heart, beating again, God, it felt like it hadn't beat for days, as she walked slowly into the hospital room, still, the hushed breath of the respirator, his breath, God, his breath, he's going to be fine . . .

He'd wanted to talk some more, the doctor. But she couldn't. She had a promise to keep, she'd promised him. That she'd be there when he woke up, she had promised. And if she wasn't, and he woke up alone, then . . . then maybe everything wasn't all right. If she wasn't there to protect him from the things that had brought him screaming into sleep, if she didn't keep her promise, then maybe everything was a lie, maybe he wasn't fine, going to be fine . . . . She'd just shaken her head, hushed him, hugged him and kissed him and thanked God for him, all right there, frightening the poor guy, but hey, Angel was fine, and who hadn't hugged a surgeon once or twice in their lifetimes? She'd kissed the surgeon, and Willow, and Reagan, who didn't seem to realize that everything was okay now, her eyes still large and dark and full of fear and mistrust . . . she'd kissed them and then run, run through the halls, three ten three twelve three fourteen . . .

She stood at the door for a long time, just looking in on him. Like he was Michael, or Lexi, finally asleep after a fretful night, lying still and breathing slow sleep breaths, and dreaming, God, he would be dreaming, but he was okay, fine, he's going to be fine . . .

Slowly, Buffy walked into the room, placing each step, moving through each heavy piece of world carefully as to not break anything. As to not disturb any piece of this new reality. Carefully, slowly, she sat next to him on the bed, sliding her hand around his, cradling his hand in hers. He was warm all up and down the length of her legs on the bed, and when his fingers curled around hers, a sob caught in her throat and refused to leave.

"Oh, baby . . ."

She swallowed, once, twice, half a dozen times, but the hurt stayed there, thick in her throat, enough that she could taste it, like ashes and blood. She was going to choke on it, choke on all the hurt and the doubt and the fear and the loneliness, before he even had a chance to wake up. 

"Baby," she whispered again, a whisper by choice and not because she was drowning in him.

Short, soft noise, a rustling of butterfly wings on the bent stem of a dandelion. Something nothing but there and oh so important in and of itself, but not outside of that. Angel took a breath out of sequence, a waking breath as he regained his breathing from the deep water of drugged sleep.

Slowly, carefully, keeping his hand in hers, she slid against the length of his body, coming still lying next to him, resting where she could still protect him. No, better. Where she could protect him better, like a lioness curling around her kittens. Warmth and love and then claws and teeth for anyone who wanted to break that.

Softly, she pressed her lips against his temple. "I love you." She swallowed the hurt again, buying herself a little time.

The small noise again, Angel clearing his throat to take shorter breaths. Slow pink as he wet his lips, short moan, quiet, and then the flutter of his lashes parting. A long, out of the water now breath. Almost a gasp, and she was hit with a flash of him down on his knees on the mansion floor as his soul slammed back into his body, and the glow of Acathla . . . and then all that was gone, because his eyes were on her, and he was smiling . . . she laughed, shortly, tears streaming down her face, the lump in her throat dissolving as she looked deep into his dark eyes and saw everything, saw him, his soul, and knew that nothing was different and fine, he was going to be fine . . .

"Hi." His voice sounded small, clouded, but it didn't sound the way it did when he was hurt. It was the deep gravel of early morning after deep sleep, and it was beautiful. She flooded with relief, closed her tearing eyes for a moment and thanked God, thanked Him a hundred thousand times in the five seconds that it took her to register everything. She laughed again, everything bitter inside of her breaking and flooding this cool, citrus smelling relief into every inch of her body.

She slid an arm around him, her cool prickling wonderfully with his deep, relaxed warmth. She kissed him, once, twice, chaste snapping butterfly kisses. "Hi. Oh, baby, hello."

He was looking at her with concern, and it took her a long time to figure out why. Laughing, she wiped the tears off her cheeks and snuggled closer to him, his hand still in hers, the other arm hugging him closer to her, I'll never let you go, God, I'll never let you go . . .

"Is it over?" he asked, confused. Groggy. He sounded so tired. Oh, but God, his voice was so beautiful . . . she kissed him again, a dozen times, two, her limbs were elastic and she couldn't stop kissing him . . .

"It's over. Oh, baby, it's over, and you're okay, you're fine . . . oh, baby, you're fine . . ." She kissed him again, shortly, and he seemed to be thawing, because he took the hand not in her possession and cupped her face with it, leaned into the kiss with his mouth and his body, warming to her. He was melting in her mouth and her hand and in her arms, but he was okay . . . God, he was okay . . . They came out of the kiss, panting, lips swollen, eyes sparkling, gasping and laughing, noses touching, still so close. 

"God, I can't stop touching you . . ." He smiled at her, looking at her knowingly, and ran his cupped hand over her cheek, touching her, feeling her, knowing for sure that he wasn't dreaming and all of this was true, everything she said was true . . . it was over, and he was okay, he was fine . . . . He sat up in bed, and she started to look worried and then stopped, still smiling that incredible smile with tear tracks all over her face and her body absolutely quivering with . . . excitement? Relief? Fear? Well, whatever, she was quivering against him, and every tiny tremble reminded him that she was alive, that he was alive, and as he sat up and leaned back against his pillows, she relaxed against him, still holding his hand, still holding him, peppering his face and throat with kisses, laughing . . .

"I love you," she whispered, pressing her lips against him. "I love you. I love you. I love you."

"I'm really okay," he murmured, not a question, bringing her up from rediscovering him. He looked at her, eyes sparkling with relief and wonderment. "I'm really okay."

She smiled. "You're really okay."

She kissed his mouth, just once. He opened his mouth under hers, pressed back with a force that said in no uncertain terms that he wanted to be kissed again. But she didn't. He moaned a little with wanting when she pulled away, but she just smiled and didn't abandon her resolve. She pulled back away from him, a good foot, and he moaned again and made a move to go after her. Gently, she pushed him back against the pillows, and he knew better than to try again. Disappointed and itching with desire for her touch, he watched as she ran her eyes over his face, then down, further, as she took one of his hands in both of hers, brought it to her mouth, kissed the pad of his index finger.

"What are you doing?" he asked finally, his muscles all seized with the tickle only her touch would alleviate. 

"Counting fingers," she said softly, pressing her lips to each one, all ten, present and accounted for, before looking at him again. "I have to make sure that all your parts are still here and fully functional."

"They didn't cut off my fingers," he protested.

She narrowed her eyes, meeting his. "Well I won't know until I check, will I?" She kissed the palm of his hand and then lay it gently on the bed. "Have to make sure." 

She slid her own hand off of his and into the center of the bed, slithering slowly down his chest, his stomach, making sure he felt every bit of the travel until she was right above the defining part of his species. Gently, she cupped her hand over the slight rise in the blankets. "This piece is all right, isn't it?" He moaned a tortured sigh, wishing desperately for friction and receiving nothing more than her tease.

"Maybe you should check," he said hoarsely.

She smiled and lay down next to him again, kissing him deeply and pulling him into her embrace. "I told you last time," she said softly. "The next time we have sex in a hospital, we're going to get arrested."

"You shouldn't tease me, then." His tone was gentle and amiable; he just wanted to be back in her arms, and now that he was, he didn't care what happened.

"I'm just making sure you're yourself." 

He knit his brow. "Who else would I be?"

She closed her eyes; a tear escaped from underneath her closed lashes. "I don't know," she whispered, opening them again. "But I'm so glad to find you again."

He slid his arms around her a little more tightly, kissed her. They just lay there for a long time, feeling the familiar sensation of the other's body against theirs. 

"I'm going to take care of you," she whispered after a long moment. "Oh, God, I'm never, ever going to let you go . . ." 

"I love you."

She kissed him softly, another chaste kiss. "I love you."

She sniffled, kissed him again. "Close your eyes."

"I'm pretty sure this is where I get stabbed."

She didn't smile. "Just do it, please."

He did. Softly, she kissed his mouth again, then each eyelid in turn. He opened his eyes. "Are you okay?"

She wet her lips. "I'm going to be fine." Hugged him closer. "It's silly. You're just out of surgery, and you're asking me if _I'm_ okay."

"I don't feel just out of surgery," he said softly. "Besides, I already know I'm fine. You told me." She didn't respond, and they were both quiet for a minute. "I worry about you."

"I know," she said softly. "I know you do." She was quiet for a moment before whispering, "I think, sometimes, that you're the better one of us. The better half." 

He chuckled. "I've never thought that. There's never been a doubt." He kissed her. "I'm patient, Buffy, but . . . I don't have your heart."

"Yes, you do," she whispered. "It belongs to you. It's always belonged to you. You take care of it."

"That's all I ever wanted to do."

She met his eyes. "You're really okay? And don't think about my heart when you answer. It's okay if it hurts, just tell me the truth. So I can take care of you."

He kissed her, softly, kept his dark eyes on hers. "I am really, really okay."

They stayed like that for a long moment, locked in the other's gaze, processing the information. Then, all of a sudden, Buffy broke, falling against his chest and further into his embrace, crying. He held her, pressed a kiss to her hair. "I love you."

She looked up at him, face shining with tears, eyes red, trembling. "I love you. And I'm going to take care of you."

He smiled. "I know. You always have."

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

They were still collapsed together on the bed when the doctor came in. Not Hughes; the other one, the one from last night – or was it two nights? It felt like forever – when Angel had had the seizure. He might have been standing there awhile, watching them with relief or waiting for a break in their intimacy to speak, but she didn't know. She didn't notice him for a long time, probably wouldn't have if he had never spoken.

"How's the patient?" 

Buffy startled, head coming up and body immediately going rigid and sliding off of Angel's into a wannabe casual but completely unrealistic pose. Like that time when they were first married when Joyce had brought Hank home from the airport early and he'd walked in for the first meeting with his son-in-law to find the two of them on the living room couch, Buffy's bra on the floor and his new son-in-law up his little girl's shirt . . . .

She cleared her throat, wide-eyed and stiff, and attempted to look not guilty. "Hi, Doctor."

He came closer – she could feel herself reddening in direct correlation to how close he was – and sat at the edge of the bed, on the side opposite of her. He was smiling slightly, kindly.

"How's he doing?" he asked Buffy, briefly studying the machines, and then checking Angel's pulse against his watch. "You think we fixed him okay?"

Buffy swallowed dryly and forced herself to speak. "He's fine. I mean, he seems . . ." She caught on something heavy in her throat that might have been a sob. "Thank you."

"My pleasure." He looked at Angel. "How do you feel?"

"A little tired. A little . . . dazed. Groggy. But okay."

The doctor smiled kindly, asked Angel a few questions, checked his pulse and the dilation of his pupils. Buffy watched from his side, trying not to appear frantically worried and failing miserably. Yeah, the other doctor had said he'd been fine, but he hadn't looked at Angel, hadn't touched him, maybe he didn't know . . .

Once his duties were finished and well-annotated on his clipboard, the doctor brought his eyes to the nervous Slayer. "He's gonna be just fine, ma'am."

The weight on her heart lifted. Almost. "He is?"

He smiled. "He looks just fine to me. A little bed rest, and he'll be as good as new in no time."

She caught herself just before she kissed him, too.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

It took Buffy a very long time to return to the waiting room. She had to tear herself away from Angel's face and his eyes and his arms, but finally she forced herself to remember the anxious faces of her friends and of Reagan, sitting huddled on the floor with that horrible look in her eyes, and walked into the waiting room beaming. Everyone looked up at her expectantly, and the worry on their faces broke when they saw that she was flushed with happiness and smiling so hard she might shatter and fall away. Xander asked – somewhat unnecessarily – how Angel was and she'd told him, told all of them but especially Reagan's gently worried face that he looked wonderful and was fine, just fine . . . . At this news, Cordelia – who had stopped her pacing the moment Buffy had entered the room – jumped half a foot out of her skin before landing perfectly back in her heels, unmarred except the blush tattooing her skin for being so unkempt, albeit momentarily. Willow and Xander hugged desperately, grinning their fool heads off and talking excitedly. Tara rose quietly, smiling a deeply contented smile, and helped Reagan – who looked stunned and breathless – to her feet. Buffy took Reagan in her arms; the girl fell to her limply, numb with shock, but hugged her back when she tightened her arms around her.

Buffy stepped away from her child, looked at her. "You can see him if you want, sweetheart. He'd love to see you."

"Daddy?" 

Buffy hadn't told him that Reagan was in the waiting room; he had assumed that the children would all be at home, as it was not in Buffy's nature to bring babies to hospitals. So Reagan's voice took him by surprise, and it took him a moment to register it. Immediately, he remembered his nightmare from the night previous and a hard, sick-tasting panic condensed in the back of his throat. The moment he saw her, though, the moment she stepped into the room shy and hopeful, it dissipated into nothing and he was filled with nothing but relief and love. He didn't say anything, didn't smile, just held out one hand to her, an invitation. She grinned suddenly and half ran to the bed, taking his hand and sitting down beside him.

"You're okay." She wasn't asking, and she wasn't telling him. It was a simple statement of a fact, a new and wonderful thing that had been recently discovered.

"Oh, baby, I'm fine," he whispered, and raised his other hand to smooth over her face. With those words, with that touch, she forgot all the dark things in the back of _her_ throat; no Darla, no dreaming. That was stupid; her father was wonderful and human and alive and everything was going to be okay.

**Wednesday, December 13th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

The next few hours were a fast-paced clip show of Angel's life. All the people he loved filed in and out of his room, and by the time the doctors ordered them out he'd shared enough hugs and kisses and sweet words with them to fill a lifetime. Cordelia shed a few tears against his neck, but was perfectly composed again by the time he broke of their hug and gently wiped away tears and smudged eyeliner from her lovely, smiling face. Michael cried again, too, and Angel held him close even after he'd stopped crying, letting him sit right beside him as he talked to his friends and family, smoothing his hair and clothes and kissing him whenever a lapse in conversation or a trembling lip coerced it. Sara and Chloe both ran into the room, both falling still a foot from his bed and gaping at him like he was a medical marvel before he shamed them into coming in and giving him a hug. Giles was nervous and fidgeted, grinning toothily and cleaning his glasses enough that Angel was sure he'd sanded them down a prescription or two. Lexi broke free from Eve's arms and ran recklessly into Angel's, and refused to get down from the bed until she was dragged off home hours later. Buffy sat quietly beside him the whole time, holding his hand and worrying inordinately every time his breath caught or a nurse entered the room. When visiting hours were over and they were scolded for the third time for being in violation, she rose and pleasantly saw everyone out like a cheerful hostess, hugging her friends and kissing her children before turning quietly and coming back to her husband's bed.

**Thursday, December 14th, 2017  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Faith called around nine the first night. Angel was awake, having blood taken, and seemed eager to speak with her.

"Hey." She sounded a bit husky and sullen, and there was a slight separation of interference; she was calling from Tokyo, where she and Gunn had been for three months, trying to alleviate the city's Ahn-Tu demon problem.

"Hi."

There was a taut silence; gently, he prodded her. "How are you?"

"I'm good. Worried about you." She paused briefly. "Cordelia called me. Two days ago. I would have come then, but we were –"

"It's okay."

"We can probably get a flight tomorrow –" 

"No."

She was quiet for a long time. "What?" 

"When you called me last week, you said the problem wasn't getting any better."

"No, but –"

"You shouldn't leave."

"Charles can –"

"You shouldn't leave."

Her voice took on a small, lost kind of quality. "I want to be there for you."

"I'm okay. You can see me when you get back."

She made a frustrated noise at the other end. "That could be months! I mean, we're making some headway, but it's still –"

"I'll be here," he said softly, reassuring her – and himself, some.

Her voice was very low. "I know that. I mean – of course you will. That's not the point. Just . . . you've always been there for me, you know? I just . . . I want to be there for you."

"And you can be," he explained patiently. "You are now, just by calling me. But you're doing so much good over there, helping people . . ."

"Yeah," she said, a bit sulkily. 

"You'll see me when you get back," he reminded her. 

"Yeah, I will. I mean, of course I will."

There was a short silence while she brooded on this briefly. Finally, she asked, "You're taking care of yourself, aren't you?"

"Yes. I mean . . . I'm being taken care of."

"But you're okay?"

"Yeah. I can even go home in a couple days." 

She paused a moment, marinating. Then: "Give the phone to B for a second."

"Why?"

"She'll tell me the truth." He started to ask her whether or not she trusted him, but she cut him off. "It's not that I don't trust you. It's just . . . well, you know, you're so damn strong, especially when it comes to being strong for other people, so . . . Buffy'll set me straight. She sees you differently."

He was quiet for a moment. "How do you even know she's here?" he asked, eyes on his wife. She was sitting beside him, holding his hand and watching him curiously.

Faith snorted. "I know you. And I know _her_ and I know there's no way in Hell she's left you for even a second unless they've pried her off with a crowbar."

He smiled a bit wryly and handed Buffy the phone. She took it awkwardly, brought it to her ear with some trepidation. "Hello?"

"How is he? Really?"

Buffy caught the tension in Faith's voice and tried to modulate her own so it was slow and reassuring. "He's okay." There was a tight silence which meant Faith didn't believe her. She tried to fill the doubt. "The surgeons did a really good job, and the doctors say that he's doing really well." 

"Really?" She was still trying to sound hard, but there was a glimmer of hope coloring her voice.

"Really," Buffy said gently. "He's . . . he's really good. I mean, he's weak, but he – he's good." She lowered her voice. "He feels the same, Faith. If there was something wrong, I would know, I could feel it, but . . . I swear, he feels the same."

Faith was quiet for a long time. "You're taking good care of him, aren't you?" 

"Of course I am."

"Of course you are," she said softly. "Of course you are." She cleared her throat. "I, um . . . you give him a kiss for me, yeah?" A laugh came over the line that Buffy could identify as fake even across the world. "And not one of those moany, lingering kisses _you_ usually give him. I don't want him getting any ideas."

"I won't." She paused, flustered. "I mean, I will."

"Good." And she sounded like she might actually be relieved. "Let me have him for one more second, okay?"

"Okay," she murmured. The receiver was barely off her ear when Faith's voice broke in again. 

"Hey, Buffy."

She brought the receiver clumsily back to her ear. "Yeah."

"I'll see you soon, okay?" 

"Okay," she said softly, and handed the phone back to Angel.

"Hi," he said softly, bringing up the receiver and watching Buffy at the end of the bed, sitting primly and quietly with her blonde head hanging and her small hands between her knees. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine, B and me. Five by five, right?"

"Right." He eyed Buffy, sitting lost in thought and some private hurt, and wondered what Faith had said. 

She sighed. "Buffy's promised me that she's going to take care of you, so . . . I guess I'll see you when I get back?" 

"Of course. I'm looking forward to it."

"I should go . . . I want to shower before Charles gets back." 

"Plans tonight?"

She laughed shortly. "Yeah. Hot date with a weapons man and a little touch in the sewers, if he's lucky."

"What about Asia?"

"Rave Cooper's been watching her."

"How is Rave?"

"Uptight, as usual."

"I'll bet Asia drives her to fits." 

"Everything drives her to fits," she laughed. "I remember _you_ being too chatty for her."

He chuckled. "I remember . . ." He quieted. "Asia's a sweet child, though."

"She is," Faith said, her voice colored with an uncommon tenderness.

"How is she?"

"Good. She misses LA, but she's pretty much safe and happy."

"And Gunn?"

She laughed. "The same. He misses LA, but he's finding all sorts of fun things to do here, so . . ."

"Give them my love?"

"Of course." Her voice was soft, a little sad.

"And you . . . you have my love, too."

"I know that." She cleared the emotion from her throat. "I should go."

"Okay. I –"

"Angel?" Her voice was small.

"Yeah?"

"Be careful, okay?"

"I will."

"Take care of yourself. And let B take care of you, too."

"I will."

"Promise."

"I promise."

"Angel . . . ?"

"I'm here, Faith."

"I love you, you know that?"

"I know."

"Get better."

"I will."

She wished him goodnight softly, and the phone clicked off quietly. Angel lowered it, lowered his hand to his lap. Buffy was still sitting at the edge of the bed, eyes on the floor.

"Hey," he said quietly.

She turned at his voice. "Hey yourself." Her eyes were a bit red. She spied the phone at rest in his lap, registered the dial tone, and then became his nurse again, rising busily and taking up the phone, placing it back in the cradle. She stayed against the wall there, back to him.

Quietly: "I _feel_ the same?"

She turned back to him quickly, looking startled. "I –" She smiled a little. "You do." 

She walked prettily to the bed, to his side. Carefully, she sat beside him, slid against him, slid a hand onto his stomach. She kissed him softly, chastely. "That's from Faith."

She kissed him again, warm, slow. He eyed her curiously as she pulled away. "Faith likes me more than I thought."

"That one was from me."

He brought a hand to her, curled it around her hip and brought her close to him. "Oh yeah? Got anything else for me?"

Slowly, with mock reluctance, she smiled. "I dunno. Maybe." Kissed him softly, another chaste kiss. He brought his other hand up, his fingers on her throat, cradling her jaw. Buffy had a brief, wry thought about how after seventeen years as human he still had an unconscious fascination with her pressure points, and leaned into his touch. He moved his fingers along the hard line of her jaw, caressing her, tickling her. She laughed briefly, still kissing him, not from the tickle of his touch but from the joy of it. With this, she broke the kiss, brought her lips instead to his face, his throat, tiny snapdragon kisses. He slid his hand from her throat to level with his other, holding her now firmly at the waist, bringing her to him. He sat up a little, and she came up to her knees to account for his movement. He let his hands come up from the small of her back to the warm, smooth plane between her shoulder blades, held her to him, kissing her, letting himself be kissed.

After a while, Angel's breathing went to pants. Buffy broke off, alarmed, looked at him worriedly. He was flushed, and flinched a little when she went away from him and let the cold air in.

"Angel?" Her voice shook.

He sighed a sigh that was almost a chuckle. "I'm okay," he said softly, shakily lowering himself back down to lying in the bed. "I'm just weak, is all."

Gently, she lay beside him, resting a hand on his stomach. "You'll be back to your full strength in no time."

He smiled indulgently. "I know." He brought his hand to her face again, ran his fingers over her jaw, touched the berry swell of her lips. She blushed a little and tried to smooth the tickle by running her tongue over the swollen flesh; she was so tender there, his touch was maddening. "Until then, we'll just have to wait."

She nodded in agreement, kissed him softly, and then cuddled closer to him and laid her head on his chest. "You're worth the wait." 

**Tuesday, December 19th, 2017  
Buffy and Angel Gryphon's Bedroom**

Angel was allowed to go home on the nineteenth, six days after the surgery and eight after he'd fallen at school. Buffy tried to think about it in those terms; that was hardly any time at all. It seemed . . . it seemed like years, she felt so old, but really, in those terms it didn't even seem enough time to do anything.

She knew he'd wanted to go home since he'd been admitted to the hospital. Two days after the surgery he'd even asked her . . . he'd woken up in the middle of the night in pain, and he hadn't been able to remember where he was, which made him hysterical. After the nurses came with drugs for his pain and to help him sleep, he'd laid against her, holding her hands, and whispered soft against her ear, "Baby, I can't stand it here. It makes me feel sick. I want to go home."

She'd relayed this to the doctors, who smiled at her like she was being precocious and told her that he needed to be held for observation. She'd told this to Angel, and he'd been very good about it, but the fourth day it had happened again, he'd woken up in the middle of the night again, and he'd begged her, _begged_ her, his tears soaking her hair, begged her to take him home.

Again, she went to the doctors, who treated her the same way. She would have left it, but she thought of the way her heart had felt when Angel was crying wanting to go home, and she – in turn – begged the doctors to let her take him home. Finally they relented and went down to his room, and she told him about how good he'd been, off the machines and almost fine, and how he'd been being such a good boy and making sure to eat and drink and take his medicine, and the doctors eyed each other and then checked Angel's blood pressure and the dilation of his pupils and tested him on things like the alphabet and who the President was. After he passed all those tests, they had him x-rayed and CAT scanned and in the end they had to agree with Buffy; he was doing just fine, and yes, Mrs. Gryphon, he can go home now.

Angel had wanted very much to go home, and he was happy now that he was there. And, truth be told, in a private, jealous way, Buffy wanted him there, too. She liked sleeping with him in their own bed, liked being near enough to her children to mother them properly. But she worried. She worried that something might happen, that eight days wasn't enough time for them to fix him.

But she didn't discuss it with him; she didn't even consider discussing it with him. Every time something happened that would worry her – she'd be giving him his medicine, or he'd make a hurt noise in his sleep – she would quash the notion of talking it over with him by briefly conjuring the image of his face on the fourth night, the night he'd begged her. He never begged her for anything; he didn't have to, and she hated that she'd made it so he needed to, hated the way it made her feel to see him like that under _any_ circumstances, let alone a circumstance of her own device. So she kept quiet about her concerns, and as each minute ticked on, her worry lessened.

But she stayed with him, nursed him obsessively. It was like having a picnic outside: she was afraid that if she left, everything would blow away. If she left him alone, how would she find him when she returned? Picnic basket gone, paper plates scattered. She couldn't risk it.

He slept. Jesus God, she didn't know someone could sleep that much. He slept all day, he slept all night. She stayed with him. She finished all her sketches for the next month and faxed them to an associate at the Studio. She mended clothing – knees Michael had torn out on the playground, clothes the twins had damaged patrolling, that shirt of Eve's that she refused to part with despite the perpetual hole. She balanced her checkbook and updated her address book to reflect new addresses on Christmas cards.

But mostly she lay beside him, felt his warmth, watched him sleep. He woke occasionally, talked to her, asked for the kids. She woke him every now and then to coax him into eating something or taking a pill. He woke up once in the middle of the afternoon in pain, but she gave him a pill and he went back to sleep in the safe harbor of her arms.

Mostly, he slept.

This was not something she worried about. Sleep was healing; she knew this. How many times had she come home from patrol and gone to bed battered and bloodied, just to wake up the next morning without even the slightest ache? And the twins . . . you could watch them while they slept and their injuries repaired themselves under your gaze. She knew that his body was healing itself, and that put her at ease.

And she could wait. She was patient.

And she'd meant it, what she'd said before. He was worth waiting for.

**Thursday, December 21st, 2017  
Valley of the Suns Cemetery**

"You know, it's generally accepted that the pointy side goes toward the bad guys," Sara commented. Reagan looked up blankly, gradually realizing that she'd been poking her palm with the point of her stake. Over and over. As she watched, blinking, a tiny drop of blood welled from her skin. Her brows drew together, trying to feel it hurt. It didn't even hurt, it was just . . . there. It should probably hurt.

"Oh, I defy the norm," Reagan said without looking away from her hand, just to say something. The drop didn't go anywhere, it just sat there, bright red and drinking in the light that wasn't in the air.

"You're hurt," Sara noticed, walking closer and taking the hand in both of her own. Their fingers were the same length, Reagan noted. Same shade of skin.

"It's nothing. I'm fine." As if she could prove it by concealing the prick, Reagan closed her fingers around the blood, curling her hand and removing it from her sister's grip. She looked up finally and their eyes met. Sara looked tired, concerned, with a sheen of almost disbelieving joy. The way they all looked. The way Reagan wanted to look, wanted to be . . . only she couldn't somehow. It was over but . . . she didn't think it was over.

This was where she'd met Darla. She almost expected to see her again, stepping out from behind a tree in — what would she be wearing this time? Black, doubtless. Telling Reagan that it wasn't over, and it wouldn't be . . . nothing would be fine again.

They all said it was okay now. That Angel was better, everything was going to be better now. Everyone else believed. Why couldn't she?

Sara watched her for a moment more and then sighed, moving away through the graveyard. Shadows twisted around her and Reagan followed, absently raising her clenched hand to her mouth and licking the slightly smeared drop of blood off. Her tongue paused mid-stroke, struck by the memory of her father's teeth sinking in and in, blood flooding up to meet his lips . . . She wiped her hand off on her black pants, hiding a shudder and hurrying to catch up to her twin. Sara hadn't noticed anything, lost in her own thoughts.

"There's nothing out here," Sara remarked, "we should go home. You look tired." 

Reagan slanted a glance over. "As tired as you feel?" 

"You know, dark colors do nothing for the circles under your eyes," Sara replied sweetly, avoiding the question. Reagan snorted and they walked for a moment in clean, comfortable silence. As opposed to the waiting, whispering kind Reagan could feel pressing outside their small circle, just looking for a way in . . .

She was crazy. That was it, she'd gone crazy. It explained everything. 

"Seriously, let's go," Sara insisted after a moment, tugging on Reagan's arm. "We're more use at home."

"How?" Reagan asked bluntly. Sara's fingers dug into her arm, but she stopped pulling.

"What do you mean?"

"How are we of use at home?" Reagan asked, suddenly a little desperate to know. Sara's face tightened as she grasped for words and Reagan felt terrible, suddenly, for asking that of her. Why should Sara have an answer? Why should anyone? And then her twin's face lit with the inner fire of some purpose beyond Reagan's ability to grasp — the way their mother's did, sometimes — and she opened her mouth to answer.

Before she could make a sound, the world exploded. 

They seemed to come out of air, sliding between shadows into reality: demons, large, frightening, with weapons almost as scary as their teeth and claws. The sort of thing that never haunted children's nightmares because no child could conceive of such an abomination.

The smell was what Reagan most recalled from those first moments, when she thought back on them later. They smelled of death. She knew, not because of the time she'd spent in graveyards, but because of the time in the hospital. They smelled of disease and despair. The smell was almost sweet, nauseating, _everywhere_ suddenly, choking off her breath, filling her nostrils as she fought for the chance to gasp.

There were too many to count; Reagan didn't bother to try, too desperate to stay alive, focused on each moment, each attack. The first blow that landed was a fist beneath her chin, snapping her head back. It didn't even hurt, though the axe that followed it, whistling towards her unprotected stomach would have. She brought her hands down on the flat of the blade, knocking it away and it spun towards the ground, right over her toes. She was moving before it hit the ground though, one leg circling into a demon's jaw while her upper body twisted to avoid a flung knife. Nothing she did was conscious; if she'd stopped to think about what defense was required, which way to move, which way to take down this attacker or that one . . . she would have been dead.

The moment they appeared, she figured she was dead already.

When she flung one away another appeared, a never-ending stream of demons from nowhere. She punched and kicked, ducked, rolled, bit, gutted. They kept coming. Reagan had no idea how many demons she'd fought, how many she'd injured, how many had injured her. There was blood, she noticed, but she wasn't sure whose. Sound seemed muffled, as did sight and taste. There was only the smell, and the feel of hatred made physical. She couldn't call it touch. Touch was too gentle a word. Every contact was an attack. Every _touch_ was meant to kill.

Hands closed around her throat, levitating her off the ground and slowly, inexorably crushing her windpipe. There wasn't any pain, just the faint knowledge that this was it, this was how it would end. A clawed hand slashed toward her stomach and Reagan kicked it away out of reflex even as her vision began to fade to black. It was an almost pleasant sensation, a cool numbness settling over her body. No more pain, no more worry. No more facing her father and pretending she hadn't . . . It would just be over. So easy to let go, slip into the dark, the welcoming black . . .

Black, like Darla's eyes. Reagan could almost see her, just beyond the horde, leaning on a tombstone with a cigarette and a smile, and those black eyes . . . Their eyes met and Darla lifted one delicate hand to her lips and blew Reagan a kiss. 

The Slayer slipped a stake out of her wrist sheathe into her hand, twisted her arm behind her back and rammed the sharp wood into the soft inside of her attacker's elbow. His scream was the first thing she heard with any clarity since the attack began. She fell, slamming into the ground and rolling away. Livelivelivelivelive. 

Something was on top of her before she stopped moving. Reagan slammed her head into the head of the demon above her, pushing it off and pulling herself up. A fist drove into her stomach and she retained just enough presence of mind to grab the vampire by the shoulders and pull it down to meet her upthrust knee. She pushed it away, twisting to find someone else to counter, something else to save herself from.

There was nothing. A few bodies lay littered around, the rest had apparently fled. Sara was standing a few feet away with the same lost look in her eyes that Reagan felt in the pit of her stomach.

"You okay?" Reagan asked hollowly. Sara glanced at her arm, which was bleeding, and then back. She shook her head no. It had nothing to do with her arm.

"You?" Sara asked. Reagan shook her head. Sara nodded, carefully, as if she was afraid any larger movement would shake her apart. "Okay. Okay. Let's go home."

Neither of them turned back, so neither of them saw a steel-toed boot — black, of course — nudge one of the dead demon bodies. The demon did not stir so the boot drove into it harder, squirting blood as it hit an artery. The body, along with all the others, dissolved, leaving a solitary figure standing in the graveyard. She didn't so much as blend into the shadows as suck them in, a living void . . . or perhaps not living.

"Stupid girls," Darla informed the waiting air, "Should have taken the out when it was offered. Next time it'll be much more painful." 

She smiled and slid on her sunglasses.

**Thursday, December 21st, 2017  
The Gryphons' Laundry Room**

"Can you grab the bandages?"

"Keep your voice down. Do you want to freak Mom out?"

"My voice was down! Shit, there's blood on the floor."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Like I asked to be bleeding Reagan!"

"Shut _up_!" 

"You know, it's not nice to tell your sister to shut up," Buffy said mildly from the doorway of the laundry room. The twins froze, eyes widening in identical expressions — the only one they had that was exactly the same. _We weren't sneaking out Mom, honest, we were patrolling . . . there just happened to be boys there._ Buffy's expression was amused though, tolerant, even thankful. _Thank you God for letting it be okay._ She took a step into the laundry room. "So what's this great need for secrecy anyway?"

Sara's arm twitched though she put it hurriedly behind her back. Reagan still hadn't moved, bandages half torn. Buffy's eyes went from one daughter to the other, heart constricting, no, not my babies . . .

"What happened?" she demanded, harsh and frightened. The bandages were in her hands in seconds, competently torn, the arm extended for her appraisal. 

"Bunch of demons," Reagan muttered, shrugging. "Some kind of gang."

"We're fine," Sara assured her hastily. "It's just a scratch Mom. Look, it stopped bleeding already."

"Were you going to tell me?" Buffy inquired, dangerous this time, sharp and motherly. "Or did you plan to cover up the signs and walk in like nothing was wrong? For God's sake, how stupid can you be? This isn't a game!"

They flinched in tandem.

Buffy's binding was quick, perfect, ruthless. Sara cradled her arm when it was finally returned and Reagan didn't move away quick enough. Her mother had her in a moment, turning her chin one way and another to examine the red marks around her neck. 

"How many?"

"I don't know."

"_How many_?"

"Maybe . . . ten, or fifteen. I don't _know_." 

"You're okay?"

"I'm fine. We're both fine."

It hurt to breathe, a constriction of air and blood when she thought of them . . . . Oh they did this every night, put themselves in harm's way. They were as good as she'd ever been, better when they could bring themselves to work together but they were . . . babies still, hers. Surely they could still fit into her lap, surely they still needed her to soothe away their hurts and stroke their hair and sing them to sleep?

They wouldn't leave her. They were too young, they would always be too young. But they were okay, they were fine, _everything is going to be all right._

"Mommy, are _you_ okay?"

It was Sara, of course. Reagan was just watching her, tousled and dark. Buffy nodded, forced herself to breathe.

"I'm just tired. Your dad's awake, in bed. He wants to see you, just . . . put a jacket on baby, I don't want to worry him."

"I will Mommy." Hesitation, one hand on the door to the kitchen. "We're okay, really. They didn't hurt us, we were just surprised." 

Buffy nodded, smiled. "Go on sweetie, I'm just going to throw some clothes in the dryer. I'm about a week behind."

"Do you want me to—"

"No, no, go on." Sara went and Reagan, a moment over, casting worried looks at her mother. The door swung shut and so did Buffy, sliding to the floor, crouched against the washing machine. They were okay. Angel was okay. Everything, everything was okay.

She would learn to breathe again, she would, given time.

**Friday, December 22nd, 2017  
The Magick Box**

The atmosphere differed greatly from the previous session. It was as if a great, stifling weight had been lifted from the air and from the souls of each of the individuals settled around the table.

They sat in the same places – after twenty years, they always found themselves in the same places, without even noticing. There were still two empty seats at the table, but their chairs were not filled now with a gnawing longing. They were okay, and whenever someone happened to glance at the empty seats, there was no silence or sadness but instead the blossoming of something exhilarating, pregnant . . . like before laughing.

Xander lounged back in his chair. "So where's Buff? I thought this was her meeting."

"I told her to stay home," Giles answered patiently. "She should be home with Angel, and we can handle this on our own."

"Okay," Cordelia said at length. "But where're Mary and Tara?"

"Tara took Chloe and Reagan shopping," Willow volunteered.

"And Mary took Rupert and Rider and Buffy's kids to the movies," Xander said. "I guess she's keeping them out of her hair. Since she's not coming to the meeting."

Giles cleared his throat. "Moving on." 

Willow straightened and tried to steer the conversation back on track. "So why are we here? What's the crisis?"

"For one," Wesley intoned. "We haven't figured out Cordelia's Vision yet."

Willow shrank back in her seat some. "I completely forgot. I'm sorry." She paused, allowed herself a moment to wallow in her guilt. "What about everyone else? Anybody else turn up anything?"

She knew before anybody said anything, just by the looks on their faces, that they'd all forgotten, too.

Xander tried to stall. "Well . . . now . . . we've all been, you know, preoccupied –"

Giles sighed. "I forgot, too."

"We all did," Cordelia said, voice firm, eyes dangerously sparked. "We've had more important things to do."

Wesley frowned. "More important than –" 

She glared at him. "Yes."

There was a brief silent tension. Giles cleared his throat again, and it cleared. "Sara and Reagan were ambushed last night on patrol."

Willow started. "Are they okay?"

"They're fine. Buffy said Reagan's healed already and Sara doesn't even need a bandage this morning. But she was worried, and she said it sounded . . . odd. The circumstances."

"Fill us in, G-Man."

He frowned but refrained from commenting. "They were ambushed, which is in itself unnerving. But the girls maintain that the demons came from out of nowhere . . . . they also say that it was different breeds of demon working together, which is virtually unheard of. It's a cause for alarm."

Willow shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "So what do we do?"

Wesley spoke, voice low and somber. "Well, keep our ears to the ground, I suppose."

"Check out all the usual slimies for anything buzzworthy," his wife translated, still glowering a little.

Giles nodded numbly. "I guess it's all we can do."

There was something in his voice and in the air that signified that the meeting should have been over, but no one seemed to want to leave.

"Ellie coming over for Christmas?" Xander asked after a while.

He sighed, began to clean his glasses. "No."

"Sorry."

"She's having Christmas with her sister. I'll see her soon."

"New Years?"

"Maybe in the spring."

Another silence. Cordelia: "What about our Christmas? I know it's our year to host, but maybe it would be better if we did it at Buffy and Angel's? Brought it to them, I mean?"

Wesley sighed, remembering something suddenly. "Angel has his first chemotherapy that day." 

"In the afternoon. We could still make dinner there, you know, to . . ." She faltered. "To try and make it feel normal for them, you know?"

"Maybe," Willow said carefully. "We'll talk to Buffy about it, see what she wants to do."

Cordelia sighed, put her head in her hands. "I just feel so stagnant. I need to be doing something."

Wesley put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she forgot she was irritated with him and let him keep it there.

"You're making them dinner tonight, right?" Xander asked.

"Yeah," she replied from within the echo of her hands.

"Well, you do that tonight, and this afternoon, you and me can go out and beat up snitches," Xander suggested cheerily.

Cordelia raised her head from her hands, actually smiled at him.

**Christmas Eve, 2017  
Angel and Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

Lexi shook her present, listening close to the box like she was determining the size and shape of the object inside. That's what it looked like, because that's what she was trying to make it look like. She already knew what it was, but she wanted very much for her parents to not understand that. From the looks of it, they didn't; they were smiling at her like they thought nothing was unnatural.

Angel wasn't well enough yet to get up and be walking around the house and up and down the stairs – or at least Buffy was sure he wasn't that well yet – so the Christmas Eve festivities had sojourned to the master bedroom. The Gryphon children sat at the edges of the bed; Angel was still in bed, but he was well enough that he could sit up against the headboard and Buffy was, as always, at his side.

"Well, Lex?" her father asked gently, watching her with complete love and adoration. 

She screwed up her face with mock concentration and slowly began to unwrap her gift. Michael behind her sighed; it was his turn next, and anyway he never did those things carefully; his paper was always off in a second, shreds of it all over the floor. At long last, the paper was removed to reveal: a box. Michael shifted in his seat a little and Buffy gently took the box from her daughter and split the tape closing the sides with her thumb nail. She handed it back to Lexi, who opened it with a theatrical relish and revealed a little toy kitty. She smiled and thanked her parents, launched herself into hugging her mother and then very gently kissed Angel, who smiled at his youngest and cupped her cheek briefly in his hand. 

They went around the circle, each opening one present. Sara watched Reagan out of the corner of her eye during this; she looked genuinely happy, the way everyone else had been since he came home from the hospital. Everyone was genuinely happy, full of love and Christmas and a genuine knowledge that everything was going to be okay.

Eve was the last to open her present, and by the time she'd finished, Angel was starting to get tired again, so his children kissed him goodnight and went off to bed.

Once they'd gone, Buffy sat at the edge of the bed looking after them for a long time before she could move again. She turned and kissed Angel herself, helped him lie down, and tucked him in. She lay down beside him and held him, listened to his quiet, long breaths, and made sure he was comfortable before rising, turning off the lights, and going to put her children to bed.

**Christmas Eve, 2017  
Angel and Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Okay, so . . . kids are in bed, got the stockings done, and everything's under the tree . . . ooh, and I had a Santa cookie!" Buffy's grin gentled to a warm smile as she sat on the side of the bed, sliding a hand down Angel's recumbent frame. "How you doing, sweetheart?" 

"Tired of you asking."

Her smile faded and she lowered her eyes. "Oh. I just –"

He smiled a little sheepishly. "I meant . . . I don't want you worrying about me is what I . . ."

She looked up at him and rekindled her smile, scooting closer to him. "Well, you know, I just . . . care, and . . ." She raised an eyebrow at him, narrowing her eyes at the grin on his face. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" he purred, slipping up into a sitting position, and then to his hands and knees, crawling over to her.

"Oh, no, you should be lying down, you're still weak and you need some rest because tomorrow – oh . . ."

He kept his eyes locked to hers as he let her out of the kiss. "Tomorrow?"

"Um, tomorrow, we . . . oh, um . . ." She grinned. "Were we talking?" 

He brought his mouth to hers again and came to rest on his knees, legs folded under him, and encircled her in his embrace, drawing her to him. She followed his lead, merging against him, folding one arm around his neck to keep their kiss at an even pressure, the other around his slim hips to keep the full length of his torso against her body. She scooted up into his lap, straddling him and wrapping her legs around his hips, gently rocking in his lap to give him some friction. Underneath her, Angel matched her movement and tempo, bringing them into a tide of movement, a single being with one distinct heartbeat.

A brief moment, swollen lips apart for a second, resting on flushed skin to not be stung by the cool air: "I love you."

Carefully, Buffy readjusted her weight into Angel, her position at his pelvis bringing him slowly down to the bed as she acted as anchor. She withdrew one arm from him and used it to guide them gently to the mattress, careful movements, mindful of any weak there might be left in him. His back against the mattress again, and she atop him, she suddenly broke off their kissing, rising to a sitting position while straddling his hips, warm hands against his smooth skin, up from his hips and passing up his stomach and chest, his shirt off over his head, on the floor, and hers with it, guided by his hands, and together again, skin on skin until there wasn't a difference, and the heartbeat rocking again . . .

Angel closed his arms tight around Buffy on top of him, half guiding her as she rocked on top of him, friction . . . he crooked his left leg and used it to push off from the bed, turning over and switching positions in an easy matter of weight and balance, a simple curve and she was under him, looking up at him with bedroom eyes and slightly parted mouth panting husky breaths and breathing his name. She brought her hands up from the mattress slowly, God, it felt like they were weighted at the wrists with all the blood pounding at her pressure points, and her hands in his pants . . . he watched her, every moment every move every breath and every drop of sweat or sex noise from her throat, and slid his hands down her thighs. He threw her panties to the floor and kissed her lips, face, the curve of her jaw and the jut of her neck, nuzzling the slight scar still there from his cure, all the familiar planes of his wife. And her mouth again, theirs together, kisses so furious and full of lust and need and want that they would bruise, God they had to, he couldn't imagine how there wasn't blood and when he tasted the tang of copper, he didn't know whose it was . . . she couldn't fathom how there was anything left of him, how he kept meeting her par for par, with the intensity and force and need in his kisses; he was trying to eat her alive, like she was him, keep her soul safe inside of him and it came out in these bruising kisses . . .

"Oh, God." She gasped harsh as he slid into her, a prayer out of pleasure and gratitude, not pain. "Angel."

He didn't look at her, eyes closed tight while kissing her, he always made jokes about it

(close your eyes)

but he always trusted her enough, he closed his eyes when he kissed her . . . he tangled his limbs around her, holding her in the same desperate hug that she had him in, so many curves and ropes of muscles that it was impossible to tell which person they belonged to, or even if there was more than one . . . and the tempo, she closed her eyes for a moment, and listened to the darkness behind her eyelids and the tempo was their pulse, and it was the same measure . . . a flash of red behind her eyelids with a beat, and he thrust, and then black and he drew back, and she did the same . . .

"I love you," she whispered, her lips free of his while his mouth was on her throat, "I love you."

Quiet, gentle, against her ear so close the heat of his breath condensed on her skin: "I love you."

**Christmas Day, 2017  
Angel and Buffy's Gryphon's Bedroom**

Hours later, God, the sun would be coming up soon, and the children would be up, it was Christmas . . . Buffy glanced at the clock, warm and heavy and aching a deep and profound pain in every muscle and bone in her body, and sighed happily. Maybe not too late. It was just a little past three, they had plenty of time, Angel really should get some sleep, but they had plenty of time . . . she untangled her limbs from Angel and the soaked sheets and rose, flinching a little as the cool air bit at her sex-tendered skin. She slid her legs over the edge of the bed, rising in a graceful movement, then leaning over Angel's warm cat sleeping self and giving him a kiss before moving on.

"Jesus, Buffy, I can't . . ."

He didn't even open his eyes, he was so near to sleep and he had to be hurting with the same fire she was . . . they'd nearly torn each other apart in their desperate coupling, the constant need for reassurance of flesh, the frantic kisses and strokes, lips together and skin on skin meant that the other was as tangible as they were likely to get, that they were theretherethere alive and fine and okay . . . She hadn't wanted to let him go, if he wasn't in her, if he wasn't filling her and if his arms weren't around her if she wasn't in him and of him then she couldn't be sure that he was there, there was no feeling like knowing she knew where every piece of him was, and she'd nearly cried when he whispered "I can't," not wanting to let him go away from her for even a second . . .

She bent and picked her panties from the floor, skin all over her body going deliciously prickly as the cool, dry cotton whispered over her hot flesh. She didn't know where her shirt had gone, so she took his, it was more comfortable anyway, and slipped it on, the light tee shirt undershirt feeling wonderfully cool too.

"Want some pants?"

He mumbled something unintelligible, mostly vowels, and she smiled and went over to him again, sitting on the bed beside him and lying her hand on his stomach. She stroked him, running her hand over his tight stomach muscles, the juts of his hips.

"Don't even think about it."

She laughed a little. "What are you suggesting?"

"I'm old. I can't keep up with you." 

"Who said you ever could?" she teased, smiling.

He pretended to flinch. "Ouch. Keep the gloves up, huh?"

She bent down and kissed him softly, cupping the cut of his jaw in her hand. Very gentle kiss, both flinching at the pain of subjecting their bruised flesh to any such pressure. Not that they stopped. 

"Want anything?" Buffy asked softly, stroking the side of his face.

He sighed. "Um, want . . ." He let one hand trail her naked thigh.

She grinned. "I was talking about pants, old man."

He frowned. "I don't think you should. I mean, you have really perfect legs, and it would be a shame to –" 

"For you, baby."

He smiled a little. "The old flannel ones? The blue? Please?"

She rose and retrieved them from his dresser, and watched quite obviously as he put them on. 

"You're very subtle," he murmured, fixing his blankets and lying back against his pillows.

"I try." She kissed him again. "I'm gonna get a glass of water. You want anything?" 

Eyes starting to close again, he shook his head. "No." 

She waited till he was all settled and lapsing back into sleep, then bent over him and kissed his cut lip again. He flinched and opened one eye, glaring at her curiously.

"I love you," she whispered, kissing him again. It was impossible not to touch him, impossible to imagine any world in which he wouldn't be there to kiss, to touch, to make her whole. She'd given up on the idea of alternate universes long before, or only allowed ones in which he was there, _they_ were there. Anything else was unthinkable, clearly against all laws of god and man.

"Love you," he returned, lifting his face for another kiss. She didn't disappoint him, and, sated, he closed his eyes, turned his head, and resumed his trek to sleep.

Buffy smiled and rose again, walking quietly to the adjoining bathroom, as to not wake him.

"I'm really sorry about this," Darla said softly. Angel started; she was sitting at the edge of his bed, the same spot Buffy had occupied only a moment ago. She was dressed in black . . . what she'd worn to class that day, he remembered that . . . and she had those damned sunglasses perched upon her pretty blonde head, pushing back currents of straight pale hair. She smelled like jasmine and her eyes were very dark.

"Sorry?" Angel repeated.

Buffy looked over at him from the bathroom. "Angel? Did you say something?" 

He didn't look at her. His eyes were on Darla, who looked like she was waiting for something . . . what would she be waiting for? Was he supposed to say something?

"I don't understand."

Buffy peered at him from the bathroom, the door slung opened, the light over the sink off to not disturb him. She looked cast in blue and far away, but he wasn't looking at her. "Angel?"

Darla sighed. "I didn't want to do it like this. I tried so many things . . . but they just didn't work. So I have to resolve to things that are . . . unladylike."

He knit his brow and started to sit up. Darla pushed him back to the bed with more force than he would have thought necessary, and less care than he would have appreciated. "I'm sorry," she said again. 

Buffy took a step out of the bathroom, toward him. "Angel? Are you okay?"

She had his attention suddenly, as fear froze through him. "Buffy," he whispered, looking at her, eyes wide. "Please, Buffy . . ."

She ran to him, knelt at the edge of the bed. "Angel? Angel, I'm here . . ."

Darla laughed. "That won't be enough, though, sweetie." She swung her glance to Angel. "It's sweet that she tries, though." She took a deep breath. "Just lie back, relax, and this will go quickly . . . it'll be the best for everybody."

_If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly._

"No!" He started to sit up again, but Darla slammed him against the mattress. Buffy's eyes grew wide.

"God, a . . . God, a seizure, I . . ." She held him down to the mattress, but he wasn't bucking, and she let go too fast and ran to the phone, upsetting it from the cradle and dropping it twice before she could fumble it in the right position . . . for a three digit number, it was hard to remember, and she felt slow and clumsy as she dialed the numbers . . .

"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?" 

"Please help, my husband, he's having a seizure or something . . ."

Darla laughed. "Or something."

Angel started to sit up, desperately, and was thrown back again by Darla. He cried out sharply, and Buffy did too, a cornered animal's last plea for help, a ragged sob, and she was clenching the phone so hard that she nearly cracked the plastic, and she was rambling off things to the emergency operator in a voice she wasn't sure was her own that she couldn't hear very well . . . like she was reading another language aloud, one that she didn't speak . . .

Darla laughed again. "She should call a priest." She went somber again, breathed a little breath and looked at Angel. "Too late for that, anyway." Holding him down hard to the mattress with one hand in the center of his chest, she placed the other firmly over his mouth and nose.

He tried in vain to rise, and then to breathe, but there wasn't anything . . . he put his hands up to hers, but maybe he was hallucinating, his hands went right through hers and the pressure on his chest he thought was from her weight on his breastbone grew tighter, more dire every second he couldn't breathe . . . and Buffy was looking at him with huge eyes but it was getting hard to see her, to see anything . . . she dropped the phone and ran over to him, he could hear the operator on the other line but it was like everything was coming at him from underwater, and she leaned over him . . .

He wasn't breathing. God, he couldn't breathe, and she had to do something . . . she moved over to him so fast she wasn't sure it was anything less than a jump, and she held his head steady with one hand curving around his jaw, her lips on his, current of air, mouth to mouth, she knew this, she knew this . . .

Darla was laughing again, he heard that clearly like she was in his head, not muted and half grey like everything else, she was laughing because her hand was over his mouth so CPR did nothing . . .

It wasn't helping. Why wasn't it helping? He still looked like he couldn't breathe, and his eyes were the wide unblinking gaze of a spooked horse, and she'd lost him, his eyes weren't on her, he was looking at something else, not looking away from her but really looking at something else and why wasn't it working? Why wasn't he breathing?

"Angel, please." He could barely hear it; he was at the bottom of the deep end and her voice barely penetrated the water. "Angel, please, you have to breathe, honey, come on, please, you have to breathe, please . . ." Her voice was beginning to crack in the desperate tear soaked way it did, and he could hear her higher register cries but everything below that, the low normal tones were beginning to seep into the black with everything else . . .

Darla smiled gently, removed her hand from over his mouth. He opened his mouth to take a breath, but before he could, her mouth was over his. A soft kiss, gentle beyond all belief. She smelled like jasmine and her kiss was very dark: he felt like he was being overcome by it, like in touching his skin she was taking his core with her. His head felt light.

Darla straightened, looked down at her lap for a moment. His mouth was free, but something was caught in his chest and it seemed he couldn't open his mouth wide enough to breathe . . . somewhere far away, Buffy was sobbing, screaming at him, and he heard all the words clearly but didn't know what they meant . . .

"Good night, Angel," Darla whispered, looking at him briefly. She lowered her head again, and then she was gone, and he opened his eyes wide to see her but by that time everything was black and he didn't have a chance.


	7. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

**Christmas Day, 2017  
The Wyndham-Pryces' Home**

**/ Cordelia /**

_A flash like lightning. Buffy crying out, arching her back, digging her fingernails into Angel's forearms as she comes. Angel closing his eyes, sated._

A noise like the world tearing apart. Angel's face contorting in horror, his mouth forming an O so tight and hard as he cries out "No" that it's almost an inhuman expression, the faked face of a mannequin. Bucking, fighting against nothing, the night, and then Buffy when she comes to hold him down, looking not at her but out to nothing . . .

The taste, taste of something sweet like rotting in my mouth, and Angel's face slackens and he is still for a moment in the disbelief of drowning. Salt on my lips, and Buffy's sitting sobbing on her knees, grabbing at him . . . the cracked phone lying face up on her bed, the operator's voice still droning out of it like horrible music. 

Angel is very still.

I wake gasping from my Vision, heart in my throat and head and back set aflame by the images slamming through my nerves. I rocket to sitting up straight in bed like I was propelled by the force of the attack, and waste a full five seconds trying to register my pulse pounding from my heart and radiating through my body before jumping out of bed, grabbing my car keys and my cell phone from my bedside table, and driving like Hell to Angel's.

Busy breaking traffic laws, I misdial three times before I get the right number. Well, sorry for waking you assholes up, but this is life and death, so you can just –

"What."

"Mary." 

There's a beat before she responds, but it's not from comprehension. "Cordelia. Not that I don't appreciate your calling, but it's –"

I flush with impatience and take a corner so hard I hear a scream of rubber and feel a moment of non-gravity where I almost flip the car. "Listen, just call everyone for me."

She makes a frustrated noise. "Everyone? Who's everyone? If this is about the club –" I want to hit her. Part of me realizes that it's perfectly logical for her to expect my call to her in the middle of the night to be about some stupid detail that I've neglected, or that she has, because in twelve years of owning and operating the damn nightclub I do it at least twice a month. But I'm pretty much ruled by the other half of me, that wants to throttle her for bringing up something so trivial as the Bronze. "—I'm going to hurt you a lot."

Somehow, I manage to stifle the part of me that wants to smack her and reply in a controlled voice. "No. It's about Angel. I had a Vision, and . . . I can't explain. Everyone, everyone needs to be at Angel's." 

"In the morning."

"It is morning. They need to be there now. Don't change, don't pack, just go."

**Christmas Day, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

**/ Cordelia /**

I screech to a park almost completely in the driveway, then jump out of the car and run to the house without closing the sedan's door. I drop my keys half a dozen times trying to locate my copy of Angel's, and I'm trying to make the damn thing fit the lock when I hear the sirens.

My heart stops beating. There's a moment of absolute silence within my veins as I realize I'm too late. 

"Angel," I whisper, trying to let my unstable weight fall against the door, but having that fall away as it swings open, my keys still jammed in the lock. "I'm so sorry, Angel . . ." 

"Ma'am?"

I know who it is. I turn to him, breathing deep, hoping that if I collect enough air it can steel my body, blow me up into a normal posture. I try to smile, but it feels like a mirror breaking and so I force a blank face. The EMS doctor, he's so young, he looks like a baby, not like someone who should have to cart around dead bodies for a living. He's looking at me with his young, sweet, worried face, and I realize after a moment that he's waiting for something, waiting for me to help him. 

"I'll show you boys upstairs."

**/ Reagan /**

Something far above the depths of sleep breaks me from dreaming. I open my eyes reluctantly, then turn over and cuddle into my blankets, more interested in sleep than Santa.

But the noise continues.

This is definitely not a Santa noise. No sleigh bells, no tiny reindeer . . . at this realization, the Slayer in me wakes up, and I grumpily relinquish my warm, soft little nest and sit up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying to identify the intruder in my bedroom.

Are those sirens?

**/ Cordelia /**

"Please, baby . . . please wake up . . . Angel, please, baby, you have to . . . Angel, please . . ."

I push the door opened quietly, for some stupid reason suddenly concerned with disturbing them. My eyes go immediately to Buffy. Angel is lying on the bed pale and stiff and looking completely unreal, my best friend and confidante and savior still and empty and unmoving and _dead_, but Buffy is a hundred times worse. She's on her knees next to him, one hand clenched white-knuckled on his arm . . . Jesus, hard enough that I know from here that she's hurt him, bruised him or broken something. Her other hand is on his face, stroking his face desperately like a drowning woman trying to paddle above water. He is dew-soaked in her tears. She's gasping, her hair and face wet with tears, body shaking hard with sorrow, sobs escaping her trembling mouth.

"Buffy," I say softly, and I can't remember if I've _ever_ in my whole life tried to be that gentle with her. I walk into the room, toward her, toward the bed and my dead friend. The damn EMS team is trailing me with a stretcher, walking much slower and much more somberly than you ever see them do on TV. I sit next to Buffy, never a friend of mine – I mean, as if – but Angel's wife and someone I've seen and talked to and laughed with almost every day for seventeen years, and I pull her hands away from my dead best friend and say, "Buffy, I'm sorry" in the sweetest voice I've ever used to speak to her.

I thought she'd struggle against me. She doesn't. Instead, she falls on me like all her bones have turned to dust and her muscles atrophied the second I touched her.

"Please," she whispers to no one in particular. But it reminds me that I'm not the only one there, and I shoot one quick glance to the EMS workers hovering over Angel on the other side of the bed; the look on their faces speaks plainly. He's dead. No life, no hope. They check vainly for a pulse and then bring out the gurney. Suspicions confirmed and a grim resolution settling in my stomach, I tear myself away from those thoughts and focus solely on Buffy again.

"You can help him," she whispers, again to no one. "I tried . . . to breathe for him, CPR, but he . . . he wouldn't and he . . ." She sniffles and whimpers a little against me. I pat her half-heartedly, my eye catching the EMS team as they quietly lug Angel's body onto their gurney. "He's cold and I couldn't . . . you'll help him, you have to, and he . . . please help him. I need him, I can't . . ." She shudders against me and I tighten my arms around her, trying feebly to reassure her. "I don't understand, I mean, one minute he was fine and we were making love, and –" She stops suddenly, so completely that I study her face. She's stopped not in censure, but in thought; her eyes aren't looking at no one anymore; they've seized on something within herself. "I broke him." 

Her talking is starting to make me very tired, but I don't want her all crazy, so I hug her some more and try to reassure her. "No, Buffy, you didn't, there's nothing –"

"Ma'am?" 

I look up at the doctor, but Buffy doesn't seem to have the will to move and just lies against me heavy and unmoving like a bag of cement.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but there isn't anything we can do."

Buffy sobs. Abruptly, she goes from the limp, boneless and helpless child in my arms to every muscle in her body seizing suddenly, jerking as she cries her desperate, screaming tears. In all my years fighting demons, having Visions, ruining people's lives in high school, I have never heard anyone's sorrow like this. It sounds like she's trying to swallow the world, if just to make this badness go away. It doesn't matter if there's no life, no sunshine . . . just as long as there isn't this. 

Beyond her, the doctor's continuing. "He's been dead about ten, fifteen minutes from what I can tell. I'm very sorry, there isn't anything we can do."

Buffy squirms away from me and looks up at the EMS workers at the foot of the bed. But my eyes go beyond that, to the long white sheet. The long white stretcher. That familiar shape, covered in snow and ice. Foreign and featureless. Forever.

"You . . . he can't . . . you have to help him, you're doctors, you have to, they said . . . the doctors said he was fine, he'd . . . he'd be fine . . ." I can't look at her anymore. I have no idea how she can be talking. Her mouth has to be widening wideningwidening like Acathla's, ready to drown everything in black . . . . How can she pause to speak, to make human words in that voice? Jesus God, where did that voice come from; that voice is reserved solely for those living in the dead. It is desperation in sheet music, and it just keeps coming and coming from in between those harrowing, death-drenched sobs . . .

The doctor who's been speaking to us has one hand resting on the white sheet. His skin is so dark I almost can't make out the shapes of his fingers and the shadow and the sheet and Angel's dead and I loved him and he was my best friend and I never told him what he did for me and how much I loved him and

". . . and I killed him!" Buffy's screaming, fallen to her knees on the floor beside the bed, her tears puddling like rain around her hand, not pausing for breath, not breathing anymore, "I tried . . . to help but . . . I . . . I killed him . . ."

**/ Reagan /**

Hugging myself a little, the cold of night not under my covers biting at me, I step out into the hallway outside my room, which has proved to be intruder-free. The sirens have stopped, but there's a slight rhythmic noise coming from Mom and Dad's bedroom . . . . For a brief second, I think maybe they're making love, but I dismiss the thought almost immediately. Not out of discomfort; I mean, come on, they've never been subtle in their affection. But because it isn't a pleasant noise. There is something inherently painful about it.

It frightens me.

Slowly, I begin toward the door, watching my footprints in the light that spills out from under their door. Halfway there, my Slayer instincts kick into high gear, my muscles going taut; I'm startled. I'm hardly ever startled, but here I am in my own home's hallway scared to death as the door swings open and . . .

I watch dumbly as the EMS workers wheel the white sheet white stretcher down the hall and then carry it down the stairs. They've disappeared from my view and I hear the front door slam and the ambulance drive away before I collapse.

**/ Cordelia /**

Buffy is motionless on the mattress. Cautiously, I reach out a hand to touch her, but I don't think she notices. Don't think she notices anything. Can't feel.

Not that I blame her.

I try to think of something I could say to comfort her, but my thoughts are interrupted by a wet noise in the hallway. My immediate reaction is panic, and I forget all about Buffy and run out into the hall to make sure that nothing else is horribly, horribly wrong . . .

"Oh, God."

The little pile of pajamas and dark hair on the carpet doesn't respond. I walk carefully to her, stepping around the watery puddle of sick on the floor next to her.

"Reagan, sweetheart," I whisper, and when she doesn't say anything, I pile her into my lap and cuddle her, rock her like I used to do Jules when she had nightmares as a baby. She's crying. Not like Buffy, but a new kind of awful. Dead, whispering tears.

Finally, she says, "I'm sorry," in an acid-washed, tear-mottled voice, her hands curling around my arms in a desperate plea for reassurance.

I don't know what to say, so I say the first thing that comes to mind. "Why are you sorry?"

She nods her head a little toward the puddle beside her. "I . . . I'm sorry. I couldn't wait to . . . to get to the bathroom."

Something heavy invades my body. Just like Angel, always with the guilt. I've been so bad, I'm so sorry . . . I do what I always did with him and kiss her hair, tell her that she's not bad. That I'm here, Angel, I'm here. "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it."

Her body's relaxed against me, starting to still, and I hold her close, rubbing her back, hoping to get her to someplace less painful. It doesn't work, but I don't think it's my fault. All of a sudden, she gets real taut in my arms, despite all my reparations.

"Did it hurt?"

I pull away from her a tiny bit, just so I can see her face. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused; she's off somewhere far away, someplace I can't touch . . . no, that's not true. She's with Angel when he went, and I was there too, only minutes ago . . .

My mind buzzes. _No, no, just say no, tell her no it didn't hurt he didn't feel a thing lie to her just make her stop crying . . ._ "I don't know," I whisper. "I . . . I don't think so. It was . . . her just stopped breathing. He probably didn't feel anything."

She whimpers a little. "Did he know? Was he scared?"

I close my eyes tight, grateful that she can't see my face, that she can't see what I've seen. "If he was, it was only for a minute."

"It only took a minute?" she asks, and her voice is so hard, so full of anger and betrayal that I flinch. Guess that was the wrong lie.

"It was only a minute, honey."

"So, just like that, one second and he was gone?"

That's not a question that anyone is meant to answer, which is good because no one is less-equipped to do it than me. Instead, I hold her tighter, rock her at a quicker pace.

"Everything is going to be okay, Reagan. I know . . . that it doesn't seem like it will right now, but everything's going to be okay . . . you just need to let me take care of you, okay? You don't need to be strong right now. I'm here for you . . ."

**/ Tara /**

"Anyone want anything to eat? I could make pancakes or something . . ." Xander mutters to no one. Or everyone. The way he talks, I can't tell. It sounds like he's talking the same way you wind a watch: just to keep things going.

I look over at him, to see if the answer is revealed in his face. It isn't. He looks tired and old, hair mussed and chin stubbled and utterly unsmiling. His sad, dark-circled eyes scan wearily over the evasive eyes of all of us, the sad band of vagabonds huddled in the Gryphons' upstairs hallway. Xander built this house, it was one of the first things he built with Zeppo Construction, his very own company, and I remember us all coming out here the day it was done. It was summer, dusk, and the sun was setting beautiful and fiery below the horizon. I had Chloe on my hip, and Buffy and Angel each had a twin in their arms, and we followed Xander through the house as he proudly gave us the grand tour. The rooms were bare and unpainted, but he'd drawn the plans and put up the walls with his own hands, and he was smiling as happy as I've ever seen him, the same way he smiled on his wedding day and when his sons were born. He smiled so proudly as he brought us up the naked stairs, and for a second I can see him waving his arm around in a ringleader's arc at all that accomplishment and promise instead of this, instead of watching him look around the hallway of the house he built to all of us grieving and the children who had been babies or not even born yet, and then to the room where their father died and their mother still lays screaming.

I can't think on it anymore, though, because Will speaks up, if for no other reason than to alleviate Xander from having to be the last person to break into everyone's consciousness. "Um, no," she says, answering his pancake question from earlier. "But if you want some, I'll help you . . ."

"I'm not hungry," he says softly, looking down briefly at Rider, his own little boy, and then Michael, who doesn't have a father anymore, in his arms. Or looking past them to . . . nothing.

I flinch from that and cuddle Chloe a little closer, cuddle closer to Willow. I look up at her, my head on her shoulder. "What time is it?"

She looks down at me, then I follow her eyes past the bright flash of blonde in my lap to her naked wrist. "I don't know."

I touch her freckled wrist gently in apology, and she caresses the palm of my hand with her thumb in reassurance. She doesn't even try to smile, and I remember her on that day that summer a long time ago, when Buffy and Angel's house was finished. I walked with Chloe on my hip, and she followed behind Xander smiling, her hair flashing with the fire of the sun on it, looking back at me every couple of steps to make sure I was with her and part of this beautiful thing, too. And I look at her now, and she looks like she's made of dust, about to crumble into nothing, and I close my eyes before I cry.

**/ Sara /**

I close my eyes tightly, then open them too quickly. I squeeze Jules's hand, and try not to look at Reagan, still desperately ghostly and quiet and safe in Aunt Cordelia's arms. "Does it matter?"

Beside me, Uncle Wesley blinks the numbers on his watch face into sharp focus, his eyes straining behind his glasses. "It's six eighteen."

Aunt Mary moves some, the drunken movements of waking, not from sleep, but from the lull of oblivion and hopelessness. "In the evening?" she asks in disbelief.

Wesley makes a face. "In the evening." 

"It doesn't matter," Aunt Tara responds, late, to my question. "I just . . . wondered."

"Why? It isn't going to make anything go away," I spit suddenly, startling everyone, myself included. Aunt Tara makes a little wincing expression and I feel bad, but also so manic and electric that I can't calm myself enough to apologize.

Julie gives me a quick hug and strokes my hair, and I feel a little better, the sick static feeling in my stomach dissipating. But before I can apologize, another voice cuts through the air, answering me late again.

"Or come back," Reagan says softly, and everyone looks at her. She hasn't spoken a word to anybody since they started arriving fifteen hours ago. She lowers her eyes and her head and then slips quietly out of Cordelia's grasp. "I'm going to go sit with Mom," she whispers, then disappears down the hall, leaving a gnawing silence in her wake.

**/ Cordelia /**

Nobody seems to be able to sleep. It starts to get dark and my inner mom wakes up and Mary and I go downstairs and fix dinner. We give Reagan and Buffy up for lost causes but force everyone else to come down and have at least a few bites to eat. Everyone who can be forced, anyway. Sara makes a face at the mention of food and retires wearily to her room. Jules follows her – she is loyal, in her way. Eve doesn't eat either, but it's because her stomach's turned, not because she's being depressed or difficult: she doesn't eat, but she helps me and Mary wrangle the kids through food, baths, and into bed.

It's ten-thirty and we've successfully put Lexi, Michael, and Mary's boys to bed. With a kind of resigned heaviness that I feel too, all four of them go without argument and fall asleep almost immediately. With all of them in bed, and Sara and Jules – and Chloe, following them a moment over – and Buffy and Reagan – and Angel, I guess, can't forget him – away too, the house feels very empty and quiet, very still. It's really unnerving, and I'm almost glad when Frey, that damn senseless tom of Angel's, knocks Santa's milk everywhere – except it reminds me that it's still Christmas, and of how tonight should have played out.

Christ. What's happened to us?

**/ Xander /**

So the question now is: what do we do with Buffy? The kids, they're somewhere we can touch them, somewhere we can lasso them, rope them back into safe harbor. They're still _here_. Buffy, she's . . . she's gone.

Miss Stratosphere.

Miss Stratosphere isn't talking. She's not moving. She's not sleeping and not blinking, but beyond the creepiness of that, it's troubling and scary.

"Hey, Buffy, girl. Come back to me, honey."

She's not listening; I doubt whether she can hear me. We've been taking turns, sitting with her, talking to her. I'm kinda of the opinion that it's not doing anybody any good, but it's not going to stop us from trying.

"Come back to me, Buff." 

**/ Sara /**

I just feel sick. I'm not hysterical or suicidal or anything like when something like this happens in the movies; I'm just sick. It feels like my heart's in my stomach, it's in my throat and I'm choking on it, I can't breathe . . . .

Aunt Cordelia tried to feed us, but that . . . I couldn't deal with that. I got away to my room, then, soon as she was gone from hovering outside my door, I went to the bathroom and vomited. God. I haven't done that since fourth grade, when I caught that nasty flu from Chloe.

Times are a-changing, I guess.

Julie hovered around me after I was sick, fawning over me as best she could, trying to make me feel better or whatever. After a while, Chloe comes in looking meek and very lost, kind of stands wavering in the door forever until Julie – oddly enough, color me shocked – gets up and goes over to her, talks to her softly and brings her over to the bed where we're sitting. She looks like Hell, her fair skin all red from crying, her hair in a worse state of dishevelment than usual.

"I don't know what to do," she says helplessly, her usually strong, upbeat voice very soft and sad.

About half an hour later – or maybe longer than that, maybe hours – Eve comes in, lights up a cigarette even though I hate the smell and Mom would have a fit if she weren't comatose. I don't say anything to her about it, and she stands a little ways from us, leaning against my desk, smoking sullenly and listening to the three of us talk quietly.

After a while, though, her resolve or her cool or whatever falters, and she steps quietly over in that tiny Asian model kind of way she has, and sinks to the bed with us. Still puffing on that damn fag, but still looking very chic (as always) and sad (this is new) about it, so I don't say anything. The four of us cluster together on my small bed, swaddled in blankets like little kids despite the fact that this is still Southern California and it's still hot, December or no. 

Jules bums a cigarette off Eve – something that generally annoys me, because Julie just likes the kind of elegant ambiance it offers, the kind Eve carries off a helluva lot better than she does, actually being a smoker – but right now it's such a silly, familiar gesture that I'm almost comforted by it.

We just sit in the comfort of our collective warmth, collective grief, and in the glow of each other's company and Eve's cigarettes.

For a moment, it almost feels like home.

**/ Reagan /**

The hardest part is that the world doesn't stop. Life doesn't stop just because his has. The sun rose in the morning and it fell right back down when nine o'clock rolled around.

Is it always dark where he is? I mean . . . the Indians used to believe that if you committed suicide, you carried around the tree you hung yourself from forever. And in movies, ghosts always wear what they were wearing when they died. So do the dead carry around their death with them forever? It was dark when he died; will it be dark where he is forever? How long does forever take in the dark?

The world keeps going, and it's night again, the first night after my father died, and my body wants sleep. It's ignorant of the world and wants me to put on my pajamas and crawl into bed.

The thought of pajamas makes me want to cry.

Normal girls don't cry about pajamas.

Does he have to wear pajamas forever? What if he gets cold there, all alone in death in the dark?

I can't be in my bed. I don't know why; I can't, I can't, I can't. For some reason, it's better to be in the bed he died in, with my ruined mother, his sweet blonde broken widow. She hasn't said a word, hasn't moved. She hasn't slept, and she's not sleeping now; her eyes are opened and glassy and unblinking.

Maybe she's gone with him. Or she's unfixable, broken for good. Or maybe she's going about it the right way.

So what do you dream about on the first night after your father's death? Does life change there? I lay down to sleep thinking about my father and death and pajamas, but what will my dreams say? I remember being very small, on Daddy's lap, my room dark and soft and the kind of warm surrounding sleep.

"_Where do dreams come from?"_

He folded his huge hands around my baby ones, so little and soft. This was before they'd held a weapon, before we talked about anything besides fairytales and life. Before I knew about death. He held my hands and hugged me close.

"Dreams are from your heart. They're things your heart wants you to know, but is too afraid to tell you during the daylight."

"And nightmares? Them too?"

Gently, he lifted me from his lap and laid me in my bed. He pulled the covers up over me, smoothed them with his hands till they were snug and lovely.

"Them too," he said softly, picking up my favorite stuffed animal from my bedside table and handing it to me.

I hugged Gordo Jr. and looked up at his patient face. "Why would my heart want to tell me bad things?" 

This was before Slayer dreams, when my nightmares were – ha – monsters under the bed. He looked away from me for a second, in a way that I didn't understand as a concealing action. I didn't understand the action, and I didn't know about Daddy's nightmares, so I didn't think twice about the tightening of his jaw and his voice as he replied.

"Baby, your heart can't keep all that hurt pent up inside it. It has to let some out, or . . . ." he trailed off and then abruptly looked up at me. He adjusted my blankets again and gave me a soft goodnight kiss.

"Sweet dreams, baby."

Well, my heart is full and heavy and sopping wet with hurt now. I can hear the echo of screaming reverberating off the thick walls of my heart as my pulse pounds at my temples. Will my dreams just be this blood screaming?

_Sweet dreams, baby._

**/ Tara /**

All our babies are in bed, and the seven of us left have all come together. Safety in numbers, maybe.

We've convened in the kitchen, because it's nice and safe and warm – and because the only other room with enough chairs is the living room, and no one wants to be in there with the Christmas tree and remember what today is.

What else it is, I mean.

Cordelia and Mary cooked, so Wesley and I clean up. We're at the big double sink, washing dishes; everyone else is at the large pale wood table, with the exception of Mary, who's leaning against the yellow counter right near Wes and me and looking pensive and alert, like there's something about to attack us and she wants to be ready for it.

Everyone else is at the table though, sitting quiet and close together, heads hung. Poor Willow; she looks so sad and tired and there's nothing I can do to help her.

I guess everyone looks like that, though – myself included, I'm sure.

"I don't get it," Cordelia says after a very long silence. Her voice is what you'd imagine a stone to sound like, grey and smooth and heavy.

No one wants to say anything, and personally I'm terrified of keeping on talking. But Xander takes the bait. "Don't get what?"

His voice is tired, the way he looks after being on site all day with his construction company. I look briefly back at them there at the table, to see if they're feeling the way I am. No one's looking at anyone else, except for Xander – who looks exactly how he sounds – who's looking at Cordelia.

"Why did he die?"

Beside me, Wesley has stopped washing dishes, and Mary has gone so taut that I'm afraid her bones will break through her skin. I hang my head and keep scrubbing.

"He was sick," Will says. She sounds like she hates Cordelia right now. I do too, a little, but mostly I'm just afraid about what will happen if she keeps saying these things, if she says out loud what we're all thinking.

"No!" Cordelia sounds like a wounded animal. Wesley closes his hand into a fist around the sponge he's using. His jaw goes real tight, too, but he doesn't say anything. "No, that's not right, it's . . . he was a Champion."

"Champions die," Xander spits. I don't know when he got angry, but he's angry now.

"Sooner, unfortunately, than the rest of us," says Giles in a dusty old book voice, and I feel sorry for him. Willow's told me all about how he lost Buffy once, and I know how afraid he is of losing her again, or of losing the twins . . . it's harder for him, because he's supposed to guard the Champions. It's his part of the deal, and Angel's death – even at cancer's hands instead of a vampire's – affects him in a way it doesn't touch us, because it's a failure, too. It's his job to protect them, the Champions, and now one of them is dead.

I turn my head away so Wesley won't see me crying. I wipe my eyes with my sleeve, the best I can without getting soap suds all over my face.

Cordelia's talking again. "But why would the Powers send me a Vision about his dying?" Wesley turns around to watch, now; when it's magic talk, he can touch her, he can take control of the situation, so he listens. I turn around and look, too; everyone's looking at everyone else now: Willow with worry, Xander with irritation, Giles with concern, and Cordelia in an utter rage. She slams her fist on the table; I jump a little. "Why would they tell me to help him and then have him dead when I get there?"

"You're not supposed to help him," Xander says acidly before anyone else can say something helpful or kind. "You're not the Champion, Cor. You're just the damn Seer."

She shakes her head. "No. No. I could have helped him –"

Xander's jaw is tight and he's talking angrily again, hard and fast. "No! You couldn't have saved him, Cordy. You couldn't have done anything. You're the Seer; you fucking See. You couldn't have –"

He stops talking all of a sudden, when Cordelia – breathing shallow and fast like a bird – comes out of nowhere and slaps him across the face. It's loud. I mean, it's really, really loud. Everyone stops talking, even stops moving, and just looks at them. Even me. I feel soapy water fall on my feet but I can't move; I'm absolutely enamored by the two of them.

Cordelia's bottom lip is trembling like she's the one that's been smacked. "It was not my fault."

I think, at first, that Xander's gonna be mad, but he's not. He takes her hand – the one she slapped him with, still upraised by his face – in his, holds it gently. He's not all hard anymore; he's looking at her with kindness, his eyes warm and soft. And when he speaks, his voice is like that, very warm and soft. "I know, Cor. That's what I'm saying. It wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could have done. There was nothing you could have done." 

"It's not my fault," she repeats, shaking. She is shaking, I can see her from here.

"No," he says softly, and takes his other hand, smoothes her hair like he would one of our kids'. Beside me, Wesley stirs; he comes over beside them and kneels beside Cordelia, talking to her softly. Things I can't hear. She lets him hug her, and I think for a minute she's going to cry, but she doesn't. She takes a deep breath and steels her resolve, then gently pushes Wes off. And when he's off her, she straightens, lets go of Xander's hand and straightens in her seat. And she looks like Cordelia again, strong and ruthless and perfectly made up. She smiles a frosty smile at both the boys at her side, and curtly refuses when they offer to take her upstairs. All of a sudden, Giles breaks in and offers to make tea; he gets up and puts on the kettle, and Wesley takes his vacated seat. The conversation at the table turns to something quiet and mundane, and I finish the dishes myself. 

**Tuesday, December 26th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

**/ Sara /**

I haven't seen Reagan for hours, not since she walked out on us after that . . . thing about Daddy being dead and nothing changing and . . . she just hasn't been around. The thing about having a twin . . . the thing about being a person that's only half a person . . . even if you don't mean to, you're always looking for your other half, and there's something missing when they're not there. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with a phantom itch of her there. I know she does too, but she'd never say so, even though she'll slip into my bed in the dark without a word, and she'll hold my hand when I come into hers. It's just . . . odd to have her gone, is all. It's not as if she's dead or anything. I don't feel a mourning. I mean . . . God, she's still in the house, near enough that I could walk up and touch her if I wanted to, but somehow it still feels empty somewhere . . . somewhere I can't see or touch. Just feel. I asked her once if that's what it feels like to sense a vampire. She can close her eyes and know they're there, but I've never been an empath and I can't. I asked her if that empty feeling, if that's what she feels when she senses a vampire, and she was quiet for a minute and said, "I don't know, does it hurt?"

I said, "No, not really. Not usually."

And she looked away and said, "Then no."

So maybe I'll never know. What it's like to know something magical with utter conviction. I told her that, and she said no, maybe not, but that I'd also never know what it's like to be Chosen but not best.

"Second born and second best," she said.

I told her she was full of shit. She didn't say anything.

She wouldn't.

"Mom?"

I'm sitting against the doorframe, in the hallway just outside my parent's room, sitting just outside the room and facing away from it, because I CAN'T look in there, I can't look in at the bed I slept in after hundreds of nightmares, to the real one that's unfolding. And I know, I just know that if I look at Mom I'll lose it. I'll just break and I can't, I don't want to.

"Reagan?" 

I can't look back to see if anyone inside has noticed, but I do hear movement inside. Maybe Mom. Maybe Reagan. Although, for all I know, it could be a vampire. I'd never know.

There's a soft noise behind me, and enough heat that I figure it's probably not a vampire. Beyond that, I don't know.

A hand folds around mine, and I know . . . the fingers are the same length, the same shade of skin. I know she's my mirror now, sitting with her back against the doorframe, but looking in. I can't look in; she can't look out. Mirrored, always.

"Hi."

"Hi." 

Her voice is old and dry, like she hasn't used it so long it's rusted.

"Are you okay?" It's a dumb question, and one we both know the answer to, but it's something to say, and somehow less painful than the hungry silence.

"No."

She doesn't offer anything else, neither giver nor taker of stupid niceties.

"Mom?"

"She's gone."

I'm about to press her for more when she surprises me by for once not being Miss Stoic.

"It might as well have been her."

It takes me a minute to figure out what she's talking about, and when I do . . . I just feel cold, real fast.

"Reagan!"

I hear her sigh. "She's dead inside."

"She said anything about . . . ?"

"No."

"Has she said . . . anything?"

"No."

"She slept or . . . anything?"

"No."

"So . . . what? She just lies there?"

"No . . ."

"'No,' what?" 

"Not . . . not 'just.'"

"What do you mean?" 

"Sometimes she cries," she says softly, and then she's quiet again, the forever mute quiet.

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"Do you just lie there?" She doesn't say anything. "Or do you cry, too?"

"Sometimes. Mostly not."

"So what do you do?"

"Try not to think."

"About –"

"About anything." 

"Escapist much."

"You have a better idea?" 

"Come downstairs; be among the living."

She doesn't say anything.

"Do you . . . do you remember the first time we had to look for marks?"

"What?" Her voice is so flat, it almost sounds like it's not a question. It definitely sounds like she wants me to shut up.

Of course, I don't.

"We followed rumors to those condos on the lake, remember? Like three years ago, when we first started patrolling, and . . . and the door was broken open, and there were bloodstains on the welcome mat . . . there was so much blood, we didn't want to go in . . . but Mom said we had to, to look for survivors . . ."

She is dead silent, cold winter morning silent, and her hand's gone slack, but this story is really for us both.

". . . and we knew, we _knew_ when we walked in, that there couldn't be anybody . . . the walls and carpets, they were all just covered, and it was quiet, it was so fucking quiet . . ."

Her hand tightens so quickly it jerks. She remembers, too.

"And we said that, said that there couldn't possibly be anyone left, and Mom shook her head and said that we had to make sure . . . so we went, we looked, and there . . .we were right, there was no one left . . . alive . . ."

"_Jesus."_

Mom put her hand on my arm, to comfort me . . . or steady me. I felt woozy. My head went empty of anything, even air, and I felt suddenly heavy.

Reagan and Daddy stood a few feet behind us: silent and unwavering, as absolutely still as the surreal landscape before us. Dali does death. 

Mom kept her comforting, steady hand on me while she turned to the stony faction behind us.

"Angel, you want to do a quick sweep of the rest of the house?"

I turned to gage his reaction. He hesitated, not moving from stone but for a few slow adjustments to his hold and stature that meant indecision.

"They've gone," he said softly.

"But anyone else . . . ?"

He shook his head. "I will, if you want, but it's . . . there's no one else."

She nodded absently, then turned back to face the pile of massacre before us. I did too. I cringed, and she held me steady.

"What did they want?" Mom asked, eyes on the dead lovers and a steadying hand still on me.

"Well, you know, they . . . feed . . ." I said before I realized she wasn't talking to me.

I regretted it further when Dad's voice bit harshly, suddenly, through the silence. "Who _feeds on _what_?" _

I thought, at first, that despite the situation, it was a grammar thing. With an English teacher for a father, it's not uncommon to be jumped on for being incorrect or vague in ways you didn't realize were incorrect or vague. I was searching my brain for some possible mistake when he spoke again.

"Let me clarify: Who is 'they,' and what do 'they' feed on?"

This just had to be a trick question. I looked at Reagan for support; her eyes were still on the huge Rorschach of lifeblood coloring the walls and the pallid, lifeless bodies splayed in sickening, waxy angles in the center of it. She looked like she couldn't move.

"Um . . . vampires . . . they, um, the vampires, that is . . . they drink blood. It's . . . that's what they feed on."

Reagan was looking at the bodies; Dad was looking at me strangely. Mom was looking at Dad impatiently.

"Vampires. Feed on blood," he said very plainly, a curious kind of thought on his face that was just almost a smile.

"I don't think we have a lot of time here, Angel," Mom interjected suddenly.

"Plenty of time," he murmured, still looking at me oddly.

"They have a head start! They could be hours ahead of us!"

"They're not. They won't run; they'll go underground."

"We don't know that for sure."

He slowly brought his gaze to her, looked at her kindly. "Buffy . . . who are you really trying to protect, here?"

I thought she was going to fight him; she didn't. Instead, her taut battle posture slackened, and her tone turned from urgent reproach to weak pleading.

"They're just so young, Angel. They're still babies."

He smiled a little, walked over to her and folded her in his arms.

"I know. They're my babies, too."

At this point, I had absolutely no idea what's going on, but Mom must have; she relaxed against him and allowed him to kiss her forehead before he turned his attention back to me.

"Sara."

I stood a little more at attention without really meaning to.

"Yes, sir." 

"Tell me about vampires."

"They feed on blood?" I ventured again, knowing it wasn't right but not knowing why or anything else to say.

"Correct. So: why do you assume that vampires were responsible for this?"

I gestured broadly to the two hearts full of vampire food Jackson Pollocked all over the hallway. "Because . . . of the blood?"

"The blood they fed on?" He wasn't mean or sarcastic about it. It was a fact-finding mission, and he was using patient, kindly English professor voice. But I still felt dumb.

"Sometimes they play with their food," Reagan intoned quietly from behind us. We looked back at her; she was looking curiously at the bodies, head cocked to one side. Tentatively, she extended a booted foot and gently nudged the nearest ankle. A blood-splattered socked foot fell over, and Reagan's eyes widened. These things happened almost but not quite simultaneously, and it all happened in a split second. She jumped back half a foot, putting her back against the wall. She felt out with one hand, shocked and looking for support.

"Rags?" Dad said gently, looking worriedly at Reagan and stepping away from Mom. She wasn't quite ready to be let go of, however, and when he let go of her body, she took his hand. She squeezed it softly as we all looked nervously at Reagan.

She looked up. "I'm okay."

"You sure?"

She looked back at the bodies, and then back to him. "Sure."

He didn't look like he believed her, but the two of them had a habit of taking each other at their word, so he didn't press it.

"Reagan brings up a good point," he said in English teacher voice, "Vampires don't always kill for sustenance; sometimes they kill for pleasure."

Right. I knew this.

"Which brings up the point: how do we know if vampires did this?"

Mom's grip on Dad's hand tightened and she took a step toward and into him. "Angel."

Despite her urgent tone, he didn't look back. "They have to learn." Slight pause. "So." His tone had changed again from Angel to Professor Gryphon. "How do we know?" 

Mom closed her eyes and turned away from us. He ignored her. 

"Marks?"

He smiled at me. "Very good. When vampires feed, they leave marks. So, in order to know if vampires are responsible for a murder, all you need to do is . . . ?"

"Find the marks?"

"Very good." He wasn't smiling. He was just looking at me, waiting.

After a long moment: "Well, Sara," he murmured, eyes on me, unsmiling, "find the marks." 

I looked at the grotesque contortionist experiment in front of me. Usually, bite marks are fairly obvious, but these people were all darkened flesh and bloody skin. I'd have to get elbow deep in them to find anything. He had to be shitting me.

"You have to be shitting me."

His mouth and jaw tightened. The thing about Dad . . . when he was unhappy – angry, sad, murderous, suicidal – he tightened. His muscles went hard and he seemed to come more in focus; his skin got mysteriously pale and his darks wetted and deepened to black. Clear, lucid, just like those charcoal drawings Eve does, the ones she made us all sit for. Pure and real. Frightening.

He just stood there looking at me, all hard and clear and frightening. "I am not, in fact, shitting you. Look for marks."

I looked at him, and then back at the bodies. Reagan shifted uncomfortably, arms folded across her breasts; Mom watched me with increasing concern in her large green eyes. I looked back up at Daddy.

"No."

He looked irritated but not really that surprised. "No?"

I shook my head. "No. I won't."

"You won't?"

Mom's brow was drawn together in worry. "Angel . . ."

He held up one hand to quiet her, and she dutifully quieted, but it didn't look like she wanted to. I was surprised; he was very rarely rude to my mother, and when he was she usually wasn't quiet about it.

"Sara. This is not an option. You will _look for marks. We need to know; you're the Slayer. This is your job."_

"You can't make me do it."

"Not only can _I make you do it, but I _will _make you do it. And if you don't start speaking to me with a little respect, I'll do more than that."_

"Angel. Please don't."

He turned to her. "They have _to learn. They _have _to know. It is my job to make sure they do." _

"Our job," she said softly.

He was quiet for a moment. "You want to coach? Be my guest."

The entire scene – the whole world tensed, hard and fast. The walls, it was like they were leaning before, they snapped up so hard and straight within this moment. My father looking at my mother, my mother looking at my father. I thought the world would just collapse into itself; everything in the world would break from this tension. Finally, and so definitely that I swear there was a rubber band snapping sound, they both broke off. One of them broke eye contact and the spell. One or both. It doesn't matter. They were the same person sometimes. Or, rather, two people who slid in and out of two bodies, interchanging, intermingling.

Mom's mouth pursed. She looked at me. "Sara, he's right. You do _need to know this. You're the Slayer, you –"_

"I didn't ask to be Chosen!"

Dad, less frightening, said softly, "Nobody does, honey."

"Why me?" Daddy was going to say something else, no doubt something about One Girl in Every Generation, but I cut him off and shut him up. "Why can't Reagan do it?"

She looked up suddenly. I felt bad for dragging her into it, but I was so not about to play Twister in viscera.

"She will," Dad said. "But you answered the question; you get to go first."

I shook my head. "No way. I'm not doing it." 

Dad tightened again and started in on me. "Listen, Sara, just get it together and –" He took a step forward, toward me; Mom placed a hand on his chest to stop him. He stopped his progression and his diatribe simultaneously.

"It's no problem," Reagan said softly and from nowhere. "I'll do it." 

He opened his mouth to say something; Mom shot him a cutting glance and said, "Don't force her, Angel. Just lay off, okay?" 

I thought he was going to go off. He didn't. He relaxed, went to watercolors again. "You're right. I'm sorry. Sara, I'm sorry. But you really need to . . ." He sighed and came up behind Mom, slipping his hands around hers.

Reagan knelt by the nearest body, almost too slowly. She took on the same underwater, kind of dazed look she'd had after she'd nudged the foot. Swallowing thickly, she turned the head both ways to check for marks. None on the clean right side; she turned to the other side. As she lay the head on the ground there was a sickening snapping noise . . . she went a world of pale, then swallowed again and wiped the man's throat clean with her open palm.

"No marks," she said weakly and an octave too high.

She stayed crouched by the body like she was frozen; after a moment, Daddy let Mom's hands go and walked quietly behind Reagan on the floor. He knelt, slipped his arms around her, and rose with her in his arms. Limply, she allowed him to do this; the blood on her hands and arms stained his shirt and pale skin.

"No marks," she said again.

"You did good, baby," he whispered into her hair. She nodded limply and stepped away from him, going back to her wallflower position.

He turned back to me. "Sara. Your turn."

I shook my head. "No. I won't." My voice barely came out. His jaw tightened so quickly and completely that I was afraid for a minute that he'd cracked some teeth.

Mom started to say something, tried to gently console me into changing my mind, but Dad did something that stopped her. In too-quick movements, he dropped to his knees by the second body, turned the head both ways.

"No marks," he said, almost spitting out the words. His voice was hard, angry, tight as his jaw. "No arterial damage in the neck at all; no hemorrhaging or anything. Also, the neck is unbroken; cause of death was not severing of the spinal cord." Deftly, his hands flew away from the throat and traveled down the swollen, blood drenched chest. "Breastbone intact. Heart present, undamaged, but dry. Colorless, parched. I'd guess cause of death was blood loss." He stuck his hand in – actually stuck his fucking hand in – one of the angry tears along the blood covered abdomen. His eyes went to the ceiling as his hand went further in.

I was almost sick.

"I think everything's intact. It's all dry, though. Consistent with blood loss."

He stood, took a handkerchief from his back pocket, and wiped his hands. "No indication of vampire activity. All cuts were made with a knife."

He balled the handkerchief in his fist and stormed out in the way only he could. He didn't make a single damn noise when he walked, even when he was storming, but the barometric pressure rose exponentially with every step he took.

"I went home and cried," Reagan whispers. "Mommy sat with me, and petted me, but I . . . I cried for so long . . ." She swallows. "Daddy didn't come home till after I'd cried myself to sleep."

"I heard him come in," I say, "I remember hearing him in the hall and being deathly afraid that he'd come in to see me, but he never did."

"I went and slept with Mom, and I woke up when he came in. He was being real quiet, but sometimes when he came into a room, it got heavier, and it woke me. Mom was sitting at the end of the bed waiting for him, all nervous, pensive, and he took a shower . . . he still had blood on his hands. He . . . I think he tracked down those vamps, took care of them, and there was still blood on his hands . . . . I was almost asleep again when he came to bed, but I . . . I still heard him and Mom talking. They . . . he felt bad about the whole thing, bad about forcing you, bad about me doing it. He was crying at the end, and he told Mom that he hated doing it, and that it was so hard . . . but he was so afraid he'd lose us . . ."

I feel numb, all of a sudden. "You never told me that."

"I never thought it was important," she said softly.

"It . . . it is. It would have . . . it would have helped."

She's quiet for a long time, doing that barometric pressure thing Dad was always so good at. "Did you have a point?"

"What?" 

"In telling the story."

"Of course. I'm not done yet."

"_Get up, girl."_

I looked at the clock. Four o'clock in the fucking morning. I slumped back down into my pillow. I felt him sit next to me on the bed.

"I'm not kidding. Get up."

"Get real."

"Don't make me use my belt, Sara. Get up."

He followed his own advice; he got up and left the room. Irritated and tired but still very afraid of the beating I knew he'd never give me, I got up and got dressed, then walked into the hall. He was standing outside my door, waiting. Reagan was there, too, in jeans and boots and her pajama top, her head against Daddy's chest. She yawned and held tight to his arm.

"Where're we going?"

He frowned. "Be quiet. Everyone else is still in bed."

I almost made a snide comment about how that's where we should be still, but he did not sound like he was in a mood to be mocked, and even though he'd never hit any of us, I wasn't about to test him on that particular subject.

"Where're we going?" I asked again, this time in a stage whisper.

"To take care of some unfinished business." 

__

The morgue. We are breaking and entering the morgue before dawn. Why can't I have a normal family?

Reagan went against another wall; Daddy went down the rows of small metal doors, reading off names, until he came to one that suited his interests. Smoothly and seemingly without any emotional qualms, he pulled out the long drawer. With the same fluidity and nonchalance, a white-sheeted visitor made a cameo appearance into my surreal morning.

I didn't read the tag; it's somehow better to not name the thing that used to hold a life.

"Sara." I looked up. "Come here."

The last thing I wanted to do was be closer to the corpse, but I didn't want him to beat me, either, so I went to his side. He pulled up the sheet, exposing a whiter white.

"Check for marks."

I looked up at him, eyes wide. "You – you aren't serious."

"Do I look serious, to you, Sara?" 

He looked serious like whatever had killed the poor woman on the table.

"I –"

"Come on. There's only about an hour and a half until the staff comes in, and we get arrested for breaking and entering and necrophilia." He was staring me down, on the other side of the table. I don't know how he managed never to blink, but he didn't. "So, Sara. You're up. Check for marks."

Begrudgingly, I touched my hand to the cold, dead flesh. I turned the head too quickly one way, then the other. "None." I tried not to look at the woman. Especially not her face. "Can we go?"

"Where else are there commonly vampire marks, Sara?"

"Um, I'm gonna go with throat." 

"I said where else_."_

"Wrists," Reagan said. I looked back at her; she wasn't looking at us. Nowhere near us.

He nodded. "Check the wrists."

I picked them up one at a time and dropped them as quickly as I could. I dropped them too quick and too far, and they made heavy, ugly noises as they fell back to the shelf.

"No marks."

Before I could ask if we could go, Dad spoke again. "Where else?" 

"What."

"Where else are there commonly bite marks?"

"I'm tapped," I said, crossing my arms defiantly across my chest.

He glared at me. "Is this a man or a woman, Sara?"

I rolled my eyes. "It's a woman, Dad."

"Then a common place for marks – and by common, I mean often enough that it doesn't hurt to check if there aren't any on the throat – is the inner thighs. Sara, you're still on deck."

I just stared at him. "You want me to do what?" 

"Part her legs and look for marks."

"This is really starting to feel _like necrophilia."_

"Do it," he said tersely, and with just words, it was a fairly non-threatening command. But beyond that, his tone was colored with the orange heat of impatience and the smooth bite of leather.

So I pushed her legs apart – which in itself was awkward, because it's not like I went around parting girls' legs all the time; that was Eve's department – stiffly, and looked.

I choked. "There're marks."

He cocked his head to the side and looked, not looking surprised, but not looking angry anymore, either. He looked . . . ew, but almost amused.

"Tell me about the marks, Sara."

"Six on the top, six on the bottom; both in almost a semi-circle; the second set is smaller. On both, the marks on either end are the deepest." My lips trembled. "That's . . . those are where the fangs went in."

"Very good," he said softly. I didn't notice, but I think he was probably looking at me with kindness and some concern.

Abruptly, the trembling led to crying and I started sobbing hysterically. I folded against the dead woman on the table before I realized what I was doing; Daddy lifted me from that awful place and held me against him, stroking my back and whispering soft sweet things that really didn't mean anything but that were just meant to calm me . . .

After a while, I realized I was screaming. I was screaming at him, the whole time I was sobbing I was screaming in this voice that was choked and scared and so not mine . . .

"WHY? WHY? IT'S NOT FUCKING FAIR! WHY? WHY HER? WHY DID SHE HAVE TO DIE? WHY ANY OF THEM? AND WHY ME? THAT'S A PERSON THERE, A FUCKING PERSON, AND IT ISN'T FAIR THAT WE SHOULD TOUCH HER FACE AND PART HER LEGS AND KNOW ALL OF HER SECRETS! IT ISN'T RIGHT, IT ISN'T FAIR!"

After it stopped, after this torrent of not me screaming, Dad was still whispering those sweet, stupid things to me, stroking my back and hair and holding me tightly.

"Sara."

I whimpered. 

"Sara, baby, listen to me."

I tried to stop crying and listen, but it was so hard. He stepped a little away from me, holding me at half-arm's length so that he was still close but so that he could talk to me and look me in the eye, too.

"You're right, it's not fair. But, honey . . . this isn't a person anymore. The person part is gone, and all that's left is where it used to live. A soul makes someone a person, not a body. Just a body is just meat, right, or a vampire, okay? No soul. The soul here is gone, and all that's left is where they used to live. And we need to know things about where they used to live so that we can help protect people that are still alive."

I'd stopped crying. Stopped quivering. I was working on bringing my breathing back to non-crisis mode.

"Sara, this is a hard job that you have. That we all have. The most important thing you will ever learn is not 'don't get killed.'" He looked at the body, then nudged the drawer back into the wall. "The most important thing is 'Never live in the dead.' Because you'll get lost, and be good as dead, too."

"I'm not living in the dead," she whispers, but her voice says otherwise. Her voice sounds like a ghost's, like old leaves. Her voice sounds dead.

"What are you doing, Reagan?"

There's very suddenly a change all through her; she goes from warm and firm and soft in my hand to cold, limp, unfeeling and inhuman.

She feels dead.

"I can't go with you," she whispers, slipping her corpse's hand from mine. I kind of grasp for her for a minute, not really believing she's gone.

"Reagan?"

I hear her still right behind me, the mirror of me even if she can't be with me – still. "I'm sorry. I can't."

She's gone. Just . . . gone. I've never been an empath, but I can always feel when she's gone.

I rise painfully and – not looking back; I can't look there, I can't see that – walk downstairs in a trance, feeling as dead as Reagan-corpse.

Lexi's playing on the stairs with a shoebox full of candy-colored Legos. Making a step or . . . something so that Max can get up from one step to another. Max is her kitty, white with silky ears, pretty blue eyes, and undying devotion to his four-year-old mistress. Max does not need a ramp to get up the stairs, and probably is more agile at this particular pursuit than Lexi, but he seems only too happy to humor her, and is sitting purring by her side until his ramp is complete. Frey, Lexi's other kitty, is not in evidence at present. He's probably in Dad's study. He always was partial to Dad, and loved to be around him and his things, even when he wasn't there. I wonder how to explain to a cat that his friend is dead as a fucking doornail, and that he's never coming back and –

"Things are bad," Lexi says, securing another block.

I sit down beside her construction site on the stairs, next to Max. I pet his head and he leans against my hand, filling my palm like Reagan had.

"Yes," I say; I don't know why. Max licks my hand and paws at my palm to be petted some more. A claw barely catches and a little sting of pain reminds me of the other night, Reagan with the stake biting into her hand again and again and again . . . There's a tiny dot of blood, but by the time I brush it away, it's already healed. My palm is perfect, flawless, but still achingly empty . . . no magic can fix that. 

Lexi's looking at me. So is Max. They're expecting me to . . . to do something.

"Yes," I say, looking up at Lexi and scratching Max's ears. It's a stupid response, but . . . oh, who the fuck cares, anymore?

"It'll be okay, though," she continues, going so far as to drop her blocks to give full attention to me. "You're strong."

My mind flashes.

"_I can take care of myself."_

"Of course you can. You're a Slayer, and a very good one."

Then Lexi says something that I'm not sure if it's real or a dream.

"I don't know about Reagan, though," she says, her voice suddenly frighteningly low and familiar. "I don't know if she's going to be able to handle this." Some trick of the light is making her eyes look very, very dark. "I think she may break, Sara."

"_She's dead inside."_

"I'm . . . I'm trying to help her." 

"It's not working. I think you're making her worse." 

She closes her eyes and when they open again, they look clearer. Bluer. Or something. I'm losing it.

Like I'm heavy, like I'm in a dream, I walk down the stairs and into the open mouth heart of our house. All of a sudden, I'm struck with bizarre imagery. I feel all of a sudden spun around to a whirlwind, a tornado that lands me back through space and time, back under the bright lights of the morgue. I turn half asleep to the left, out into the open room, and Dad's standing there all taut and hard, looking at me expectantly. I turn back and try to make out the features of the room from beneath the bright lights. I turn back to Dad, but he's all of a sudden gone. I close my eyes against the artificial sun, and when I open them again, our house comes out of the inverse night with a noise like a vacuum or a scream or a window shutting.

What it is, it's the smell.

_Flowers_. Goddamn it, the fucking house is painted up like some dolled up dime store whore, filthy littered with stupid, gaudy, it . . . fuck, it smells like DEATH.

Before I realize it, there's some kind of explosion and I look up and there's thick stegosaurus scales of red vase, and there's too thin water and dead body stalks of stem and car accident crushed skulls of flower petals, and they're all jumbled together on the floor against the wall in some tangle of massacre. 

I run. I can't deal with this. I just run away. 

**Wednesday, December 27th, 2017  
The Gryphons' Home**

**/ Cordelia /**

Flowers. Check. 

Priest. Check.

Casket. Check.

We've routed all the cards and flowers to the funeral parlor. Xander thought this was the best course of action after Sara threw a pot of mums across the living room. Mary started to clean it up, then suddenly burst in to tears and started raving about how we never have flowers except for at funerals.

So no more flowers at the Gryphons'.

Eve was helping me here, but she got overemotional talking about "the body" with some dumbass from the hearse service, and accidentally melted the phone. So she's gone home, and it's just me, which is actually better because now I can ignore people's feelings and just be me.

That's right, the Bitch Queen of Sunnydale is presiding over this show, so you better not fuck up.

**/ Reagan /**

What I wonder about is embalming.

I mean . . . think about it. What does it say about our society if we have to make death absolutely empty, clean, and impersonal? Death is a kind of unbirth, the most personal thing in your entire life. But we've made it sterile and . . . more than the hospital. I can just seem him on the table, a mock up of the surgery, bright lights and white sheet, but the players all wrong. There're no machines, no talking, no noises. The one thing we can't take away from death is its silence. Someone said that the absence of sound is the absence of life. And vice versa, I guess. And when they scoop him out hollow like a snow crab, what do they think? Is there silence there, too? How far does his stillness go?

It makes me sick to think about. In my mind, they use a spoon – the big one, like for hollowing out jack-o-lanterns – to scrape away everything from inside of him and leave him empty and weightless. Terribly fragile, now just a porcelain shell. Not even a candle to light him anymore; that's burnt out.

That's the problem, though, isn't it? 

I'm back where I started, and when I think about it, I never really went anywhere. I've just been moving in circles, treading water.

Or not. Maybe not treading.

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Funeral's tomorrow. 

**/ Buffy /**

It's not enough that I manage to kill him once. No, I am the truly talented kind of girl who can kill the man she loves twice in one lifetime.

The house is dark and quiet; even Reagan, who has been skulking around here for what could be weeks, even she is gone. I'm starting to come out of the numb, disorienting fog, starting to be able to form individual thoughts . . . to pull just a few things out of the barrage of words and images that are coursing through me like the fucking Mississippi. 

It's cold. When is it ever this cold in Sunnydale? Well, that one winter when it snowed to keep me from causing his death a second time. Hey, whoa though, got to make that up. You sneaky devils, thought you could slip that second chance right by me, did you?

You underestimate the power of the Slayer. I am a magic act: the amazing death-making girl. See her twist high above the trapeze, holding her lover's hand in one hand and a sword in the other. Poof, in a cloud of smoke, the net bows and balloons, drastically changes shape with its fifteen-second pregnancy. A bounce, delivery, and he's on the floor on his knees with the sword through his heart.

The lady takes a bow.

Clap, ladies and gentlemen. Where else can you see an act like this? She's truly amazing, ladies and gentlemen.

She kills everything she touches.

"Take a bow," I whisper to myself. Desperately, I rake my hands over my own flesh, hoping that maybe I'll work a little bit of that old black magic on myself, and fix things. But no. Poor Buffy, never dying when it's convenient.

My arms are bleeding from where my nails have dug into them . . . I didn't even notice. It doesn't even hurt. But to stop, to not tear myself to bits

(although maybe I should. I deserve it. Murderer. Murderer.)

I fold my hands across my chest, hold myself in my very own straight-jacket. I realize how fucking crazy I must look, how crazy I feel, how desperately out of control, and the tears start again.

Just what I need. Look, ladies and gentlemen. The Amazing Buffy can also cry a river! Not happy with your handiwork, are you sweetheart? Can't control those hands those emotions, can't control . . . anything.

"Don't cry."

I look up so fast, sit up so hard, that I feel a ligament in my back just snap. But I don't care. I'm breathing so hard and fast and shallow that it is not inconceivable that I could crack a rib, too, but I don't care.

He's sitting at the edge of the bed, near to me . . . Christ, how could he have been that near to me and I didn't notice? He's looking at me with his big dark eyes like looking at the horizon, and his face all compassion and love and . . . oh, Jesus. 

"Don't cry," he says again. His voice is very soft and low and runs fleet fingers over my belly and down between my legs, just like always.

"Angel." I choke it out. It's like in the movies, when they pat the drowning victim on the back and they magically just spit up all the water they've swallowed. It's that sound, but he hears it.

I know, because he smiles.

**/ Reagan /**

_i'm here for the burial_

It seems like a stupid ritual. That's all it is: just another ritual. When your life's full of them, full of spell craft and blood rites, then rituals kind of bleed into themselves in a . . . well, ritualistic kind of numb blur. You forget the holiness of the act and just strip down to facts. Amethysts are used for money spells and cleansing one's aura. Blood and semen are only used for very powerful spells, usually binding or very bad. A pinch of rosemary in a cup of tea can make you invisible. If you know what you're doing, circles are bound and marked with soil or salt, depending on how powerful the spell is. Shape-shifting spells need hair, flesh, or blood but won't work with teeth or bone.

You conjure during a full moon and banish during a new, and you consecrate the ground for your father's coffin under the miserable crest of a sickle-d Christmas crescent.

"Why are we doing this?"

Giles's jaw is clenched. "They'll know who he is."

What he means is, you don't want a bunch of callow, pissed-off undead digging him up and taking him apart, taking pieces of him home, do you?

No, I don't.

The water, holy or not, has made the ground soft and wet and . . . it's soft and dark and caked heavy and wet all over my jeans; it runs up my arms like bloodstains and is the color water is inverted in my hair and on my face.

I look at Sara, shoveling diligently, and right now she's my twin; we have the same Rorschach of Dad's grave smeared all over us.

It's dirty, grim work, and I know by the way he asked and by the way he grimaces every time he looks at us that Giles swallowed a piece of his heart when he realized we had to this . . . he didn't want to ask us, to make Daddy's little girls dig his grave . . .

But then, there at the bottom of all this regret, we're still the Slayers, and the warriors always bury the dead.

**/ Sara /**

She's slipping. I think about what Lexi said, and I look at Reagan, and I see it. With every second she breathes, she dies a little more. Every move she makes – every step she takes, every time she cocks her head, every time her lips move to purse or speak – the movements become more automatic, less human. 

I wish she'd cry. I know it's horrible to wish that my baby sister would break down and cry, but it would . . . I don't know. Make her a little more alive, if she'd break. If she'd give me anything. Or anyone. The only one she's been with is Mom, who Reagan herself described as dead inside.

Giles took us home, and Reagan nearly ran to the bathroom upstairs. I walked up slowly after her, trying not to throw mud all over the place on my ascent. Reagan had. She didn't care. I'll clean up after her later.

I found her in the middle of the bathroom, lights off, with only the streetlights shining through the window and the small nightlight's yellow glow to illuminate her. She'd stripped her shirt off . . . the mud had soaked through to her skin, and she was wet throughout. I walked in, stripped off my shoes, and started cleaning, too.

And here we are now.

"Do you think holy water smells different?"

She looks at me with this look that . . . it makes me sure she wishes I hadn't said anything.

"I mean . . ." Of course, I go on. I babble. "I know there's not really any difference, you know, except for the holiness or whatever, but . . . I don't know. I think it smells different. You can't really smell sacrament, though, can you?"

She's not glaring that ugly look at me anymore; she's glaring a brand new ugly look at her arm. She's scrubbed it pink, but it's apparently not clean enough yet. Apparently no one's ever told her that when you've drawn blood, you've exfoliated, but I guess that's her deal. I work some shampoo into my hair; dark water runs into the sink, over my hands.

"I don't know," she snaps. "Can you smell blasphemy?"

The water runs clear and I'm toweling it out when the silence starts to get to me again. I look over at her again; she's still scrubbing her damn arm.

"You don't have to be such a bitch about it, Reagan." That was a stupid thing to say. 

At first, nothing happens. She just goes real still; all her movements arrest simultaneously and completely. She drops her cloth, stopping in mid-stroke. She stops breathing, and – I swear – the dirty water dripping off of her hangs pendulous from her flesh and hair but doesn't dare drop. She looks up at me slowly, with dark angry lion eyes. The eyes of the First Slayer, of something that has nothing but death in its veins. "Excuse me?"

She doesn't really expect an answer, and she ignores me completely when I start to yammer a retraction.

"I have just been _baptized_ in the soil of my father's grave, and the godforsaken holy water that's the only thing that'll make sure his body isn't _defiled_ –" She's talking really fast, and she's getting louder and whiter with every word. "I should think that it's perfectly understandable if I'm a little TESTY."

I . . . it's worse when I make her angry than it is with anyone else. Beyond hurting my little sister's feelings, there's the . . . connection. Every time she's highly emotional . . . when she's jazzed onstage, when she's exhilarated in the middle of battle, when she's nervous before a chem test . . . I feel it. In that little shared pocket inside me that aches when she's gone, I feel it. And after I say that, I feel an unbelievably hot welling of anger and pain run all through me. Reagan's anger. Reagan's pain. 

"I'm sorry," I whisper, but it's kind of hard to hear my voice, to feel it inside of me to speak.

"Sorry?" She throws up her hands . . . "Sorry!" . . . and tears at her hair, ribboning her fingers through the thick, dark, muddy strands and balling her hands, spilling up thick rolls like turf clutching at her skull. As soon as she does this, the anger dissolves inside us both, and she falls sobbing to her knees, her hands in her hair and her arms hugging herself. I can't move, my gravity's frozen like hers was earlier, and she's crying, my wish come true, and whispering . . . crying the same thing over and over . . .

"I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . ."

All of a sudden, the lead weight in her part of me stops making it hard for me to breathe, and I can move again. I go over to her, kneel next to her on the floor and take her into my arms. She crumbles against me like the soil still all over her and I hold her as she cries.

"I hate him," she moans, still crying, shaking against me. "I hate him for going away."

I'm shocked. "You hate Dad?" 

She cries harder. "I know! It's sick, hating him for dying, but . . . I do. I hate him for leaving me, I hate him for breaking Mom, I hate him for making me have to dig his fucking grave, and for making it hard for everyone to talk or breathe and . . . I hate him for dying. I hate him for dying."

**/ Buffy /**

_oh my my  
oh hell yes  
honey put on that party dress_

"Turn that off."

I close my eyes, and when I open them again, the radio's not playing anymore. 

"Thanks."

He smiles kindly. "No problem." 

We're in our room, the lights off, laying on our backs and looking up at the ceiling. The house is finally almost quiet; the pounding has stopped, anyway.

"Big day tomorrow," he says.

"For you, too."

He laughs; it sounds a little hollow, a little dry. "Guest of honor."

He's looking up at the ceiling still; I slide up to one knee and then slide over him; I plant my hands on either side of his head and straddle him. He looks up at me from the flat of his back, looking a little shocked but not displeased.

"I don't want to go." 

He smiles a kind of indulgent smile at me. "You have to, babe."

"I don't want _you_ to go."

He laughs that dry laugh again. "That I can't help you with, I'm afraid."

"Stay with me." I try to be beautiful when I say it, but I'm kinda afraid I come off as weak and thin as my voice sounds.

"I can't."

He sits up, suddenly, and I go to a kind of prone half-sitting position on my knees as I'm displaced from him.

"Look, Buffy." He comes up on me, and it seems like he's bigger, broader than he should be. He's looming over me, eyes locked to mine, and I feel almost afraid. He's so strong . . . I want him to stay and take care of me. "I can't stop this. Tomorrow morning, I'll be buried, and I'll be gone, and you'll never see me again. You'll be all alone."

I start crying, all of a sudden; I try to fall against him, but I can't feel him on my skin, on my body, so he must be disgusted by my weakness . . . he must not want to touch me.

"Why! Why are you leaving me?"

"Because I'm dead, Buffy. Jesus. Dead. Dead."

He drags it out, and every second of it hurts exponentially worse than the one preceding.

"But I . . . I can't do it alone. I . . . I don't want to. I . . ."

He looks at me with a tired look. "You're going to have to, now aren't you?"

I shake my head . . . fast. Too fast. I feel out of control, scary.

"No!" I'm up on my knees, up on him now; my hands are clawed so tight around his arms that I can't feel anything but my fingernails biting into my palm and the pain in my fingers from holding him so tight. "I can't! I can't! I can't, Angel, please, help me, tell me what to do."

A strange, kind of knowing look comes into his eyes. So fucking gently, he unclenches my hands from him, holds them briefly in both of his. "I have an idea," he says softly. "Why don't you run us a bath?"

**/ Reagan /**

After a long time, I can breathe again, and I push Sara off and come to my feet.

"I'm sorry," I say and turn away from her.

"No," she says, coming up behind me and putting her hands on my bare shoulders. My skin feels flushed with wicked fever and her hands feel icy on it. "No, don't be sorry." She pets my filthy hair a little. "It's okay to feel . . . however you feel . . ."

I shrug her off and step away from her, too far for her to touch. I step into the bath/shower . . . whatever . . . and pry my stiff, heavy, mud-encrusted jeans off my cold, wet legs. I throw them to the floor; there's mud that seeped through my jeans staining my legs, and a fresh gush of dark water falls out to the porcelain and over my hands and legs, like I've opened a wound . . . and it feels like an opened wound, suddenly, the same kind of irrational nausea as when you cut yourself, when you peel the bandage back and see that not only has it not healed, it's worse, it's festering into cancer and death and . . .

This crazy, panicked nausea grips at me and I cry out without meaning to. Sara starts to come to me, but I draw a little further away with a jump and a shudder, and she just stands there gaping at me . . .

I'm still crying. I hadn't noticed until just now, but I haven't stopped crying from before . . . I can't stop. I'm not sure I want to, not sure it's even an issue, but what if I can't stop, what if . . . ? I get these sudden, stupid images of me suddenly bursting into water or drowning in my own tears, the inverted Ophelia, and I . . .

"Sara," I say in a nothing voice. She may be looking up at me; I don't know. My eyes are on my tears falling into the puddle of wound water at my feet, and I can't seem to look away from . . . "Sara, I think I'm going to take a bath."

"I can stay, if you want," she says. She sounds small and desperate. Probably very similar to how I look. My voice, I sound empty and hollow and dead, and I know she can't look like that; I'm the water and she's the flower in the glass, always. "I can stay."

What she means is she wants to stay, please don't shut me out, I have to be here to play the protector and the voice of reason here, always.

"I think I'll be okay," I say, and twist my arm behind my back and unhook my bra. I let it fall off my shoulders, my breasts, and then throw it on top of my "sacramental" jeans. My muddy panties follow that; I can hear her edging to the door. She wants to stay, I know she does, but . . . I know I'm her little sister and her twin, and she'll sleep beside me when she has nightmares and that my body is, in essence, hers as well, but she's still the girl that always blushes in the locker room, so . . .

"I'll be around if you need me," she whispers, and I turn on the shower so I can decently rinse before my bath.

Even over the angry noise of the water thundering over and around me, I hear the door click. Yeah, that was a cowardly, shitty thing to do.

You know what though?

I don't care.

**/ Sara /**

She's lost it.

I'm going to clean the stairs.

**/ Buffy /**

The water's hot and it's steamed up the mirror to a kind of cinnamon roll icing frost. The heat and wetness of the water has made the whole room heavy, lazy, warm, and moist. It's almost pleasant, kind of like a stormy Sunday afternoon. 

Angel's sitting complacently on the edge of the tub, one hand dipped into the water, making little arcs and dips with his fingers. "Nice," he says, smiling. His voice sounds a little odd, a little like someone else. Maybe it's the fog, or the echo of the bathroom.

And here I was, thinking I knew every inch of him. 

I look down doubtfully at the water. "Is this helping?" 

"It will."

He takes his hand from the water with the same rippleless grace of an Olympic diver and turns to look at me straight on, his hands folded almost shyly in his lap. "Take your clothes off."

I look at him hopefully. "Help me?"

He smiles an odd smile, eyes laughing all over me. "No."

I open my mouth to protest, but close it when he speaks again. "I'd like to watch."

He smiles.

**/ Reagan /**

Maybe not baptismal clean – ha – but clean enough that my bathwater will be more of a cleansing bath than a turbid stew. Bathwater's hot, feels hotter than the nails the shower was spitting at me . . . makes my flesh feel like the muscles are all stretched drum tight over my bones, on fire. So hot my muscles _ache_. 

This ache tears at my feet, legs, stomach, arms, chest as I fall slowly into the echoing silence of the water.

It hurts. 

I don't care.

My body starts to adjust to the pain – I am, after all, actually built for that – and I feel almost pleasant. Almost weightless. At once completely vulnerable and bizarrely safe in my aquatic cradle. Coffin.

I'm naked and exposed and weaponless, but I feel almost safe.

**/ Buffy /**

It's weird. I've always felt completely safe with him. Even under his body, naked under him, my neck arched – exposed – weaponless . . .

The way he looked at me . . . the way he looks at me now, is one of the best, most comforting things in the world. It's being completely and totally loved; I look at him looking at me and I see all the reasons he loves me written in his face. I'm standing naked before him; I know I'm skinny and tired and worn since he got sick, but with him looking at me like that, I feel beautiful . . . I AM beautiful.

"What now?"

He motions subtly, and I feel like I should know already, but he's just looking at me with love. Shaking, I follow the arc of his movement and lower myself into the bath. When I'm on my knees I look up at him for support; he whispers quietly that it's okay, and I slide down until I'm lying in the tub. It's hot, but it feels nice on my skin. He smiles at me and runs his hand over my legs, the concave of my stomach; it feels like little rivers running over me. I know he's there, but I don't feel anything but the movement of the water.

"Mm." My muscles relax under the water and his touch. I could almost die.

**/ Reagan /**

It's . . . it's almost like a surrender, somehow, allowing the water to take you into its body. It's a deeply intimate act, and – like most intimate acts – queerly dangerous. But maybe that's what intimacy's all about: laying yourself vulnerable to such a danger, whether it's emotional or physical. It's all about taking a risk and making yourself a sacrifice. And when you get down to it, what's sexier than that?

I totally understand Ophelia.

**/ Buffy /**

"What happens now?"

"Well . . ." I'm not looking at him; my eyes are closed under the morose tranquility of the warm water, the muggy tropics of our bathroom. "Tomorrow you'll put on a black dress and bury your husband."

My eyes fly open and I sit shock straight, throwing water all over everything. "No! You said you were going to help me!"

He hesitates, mannerisms quick with indecision. "I don't know that you really want my help." 

"I'm asking for it, aren't I! I –"

He raises his hands to chest level, palms out, defensive. "You . . . you misunderstand me. Or, rather, I . . .I didn't really speak well."

Oh. I calm a little – very little – and wait for him to correct himself, to speak better. He will. I trust him. He's here to help me. He always helps me. He takes care of me.

"What I mean is . . . maybe you're not quite . . . ready to let me help you?"

I shift one leg so my weight falls to where I'm facing him completely; my hands grip the porcelain lip of the tub seemingly without my involvement.

"I love you. I trust you. I'll . . . I'll do whatever it takes . . . I'll do anything you ask me to, Angel."

He's looking at me quietly; really, he's looking into me, I mean really looking into me, really seeing me . . . all of a sudden, he smiles.

"Okay. I'll help you."

**/ Reagan /**

_the sweetest way to die_

I think there's something very personal, very sacred – sacramental, if you're my sister – about death. It's kind of a morbid thought, I guess, but in my line of work, it's kind of an ever-present one. It becomes an obsession, which is even more morbid, I guess, but . . . it's true. It does. You wake up every morning and the first thought inside your head is: "Is today the day I die?" Without even thinking really. It's a reflex, like blinking. And it follows you. Your back's against some stone angel and all you can think is, "Please, not like this." A vampire smiles at you from across the throng on the dance floor and you know he knows who you are, by the way he looks at you, and your next thought is, "Will he be the one?" Your own stake's hard against your belly, and the wind's in your hair, and your heart's pumping hard enough to beat out of your chest, and what you think is, "Will it hurt?" And you're not thinking abut the incision, because you know how that feels, being wounded in battle is somehow always like the pain of sex; what you're thinking about is what happens when your heart _does_ beat out of your chest, when it beats. Out. 

Obsessed much? Yeah, well maybe I am, but . . . everyone wonders. I mean . . . everyone thinks about it at one time or another, even people who don't make it with their hands every night, so . . . I guess I'm entitled. I can be obsessed if I want, because it's my business.

Except that it's more than business.

**/ Lexi /**

I sit up in bed, woken up by some noise. I can't hear it now. I can't hear anything. But it's not right; it sounds like I'm in a tunnel. It smells like rain. I don't hear any rain, but little shadows of raindrops are splashed all over my walls. But then I look at the window, and there aren't any raindrops there to make shadows on my walls. And when the streetlight shines down – unbroken – to the floor, it reflects on water. I look down and my bed's an island now, surrounded by clear water. It smells like rain.

Then I look up again, and Mom's sitting at the end of the bed, naked, hands in her lap. Her skin's very very white, and her lips are dark. You can see veins, all dark, in her face and chest, around her eyes and up her arms. Her hair is wet and tangled. She's looking away from me and down, and I look there too and Reagan's sitting in the water, her legs up by her chest. She's naked and pale like Mom, but she's crying. She's crying real dark tears, and they're staining her face and hands.

"We're linked," she says, and when she speaks, I know it's really Sara in Reagan's body. Her voice sounds full of water, too. "She forgot. She's an empath, but she forgot."

I look at Mom. She looks at me, with her eyes all surrounded by darkened skin, and opens her mouth to say something. But when she does, she doesn't make any noise. Her mouth opens, very dark, and a waterfall of clear water falls out and into her lap, then runs down to the water below, and SaraReagan.

I wake up. It's dry, no water. But I can still smell the rain.

**/ Buffy /**

"I don't . . . I don't understand how." 

"Just close your eyes," he says softly, and brushes his knuckles gently over the plane of my face. "Close your eyes, relax, and you'll be with me." He takes my hands in his and kisses me. "Forever."

"I –"

"That's the point, isn't it?"

I smile. Yes. Exactly.

I'm resting on my knees; I kiss him, close my eyes, and – still holding his hand – lay face down in the water.

**/ Reagan /**

In movies, when you see someone drowning, they're always scared. They kick up whitewater, scream and flail around. I understand that. Your body naturally freaks when it can't breathe. Humans are naturally afraid of water. I understand, but I don't particularly agree.

There is, I think – I mean, there's got to be – a time when you're not afraid anymore. When even your body calms down and lets itself surrender.

I guess we'll find out.

**/ Buffy /**

He's right. It's easy.

**/ Reagan /**

It's not really hard. I thought for a minute that it'd be hard.

**/ Buffy /**

I wonder if it'll hurt.

**/ Reagan /**

It doesn't hurt.

**/ Sara /**

It's starting to hurt to breathe, I . . . I can't . . .

Suddenly, I feel heavy and everything gets dark.

**/ Xander /**

I'm woken up at – check the clock – 3:14. In the AM. Mary, curled around the boys, mutters something I'm pretty sure is of the highest order of profanity.

Lexi's up on the bed, almost on my chest. She's glaring at me, little hands balled into little fists. She looks pissed. Strange kid. That's what they get for naming her after me.

"What is it, Lex?" I ask, and try not to yawn. That might upset the little tyrant.

"Mom." 

"What about?"

"You need to talk to her." 

"It's three o'clock in the morning, honey, can't it wait? She's probably sleeping."

"No. Now."

"Her door's locked, it's been locked all –"

"Break it down."

She's looking at me with utter conviction, and her little voice is hard. Gently, I lift her off my lap and set her down on the floor, and then I stand and the two of us walk down the hall to Buffy and Angel's bedroom. We stop in front of the door.

"I don't hear –"

"Break it down."

Dumbly, I try the handle. Still locked. I look down at Lexi; she's looking up at me with those huge, purposeful blue eyes. Stupidly, I clear my throat. "Buffy, open up."

Nothing.

I look down at Lexi; she's still looking at me. "Buffy, open up, or I'm gonna break down the door." Nothing. I'm starting to sound like a bad cop movie. "Buffy, I –"

Lexi slams into my legs with both hands extended. "Now!"

I don't know why, but there's something in her voice that makes me listen. I lower my shoulder, back up, and slam into the door. It buckles but doesn't break open. Again. Nuh-uh. Again. This time, the door cracks open, and Lexi and I hurry in. I glance at the bed; she's not there. There's no one there. The bed is empty.

Lexi's not moving. She looks waxy; she's looking at the closed bathroom door. "Hurry," she says, but her voice is scratchy and little.

That door's not locked. It swings right open when I turn the handle . . . it's dark inside, just a nightlight and the streetlights from outside lighting the room . . . the room's too warm, and the window and mirror are fogged up . . . there's water on the floor and the tub's full and . . .

"Jesus Christ. Buffy."

Deja fucking vu. She's clammy and cold and wet and drowned in my arms; I'm half in the tub, half out, and then both of us are on the slick tiled floor in a pool of water, and I'm soaked to the bone . . . I lay her down on the floor, face up, and lean over her. I breathe slowly into her cold, slack mouth . . . damn it, girl, wake up . . . two strong breaths and then listen, pump her heart . . .

"Come on, Buffy, come on sweetheart, breathe, Buffy, breathe . . ."

The love of my life, maybe, and the irony here is that I could only kiss her when she was drowned, she only ever loved me because of witchcraft, and the only time my hands or eyes ever touched her naked body is now when it's cold and dead.

Another breath. Another. Hands on her chest, over her breastbone, hard pressure. One, two.

It's not working. Why isn't it working?

"Come on, Buffy . . . come one . . ."

She's so heavy, I mean, the water or . . . death has made her so . . . I mean, that's not what I mean. I meant, she . . . . come on, Buffy, breathe . . . 

Suddenly, she writhes underneath me, her body jerking suddenly beneath mine. Her body arches and slams into mine, and I wrap my arms around her as she coughs violently. Water falls, sprays, jerks out of her mouth, violent, so much fucking water, Jesus, so much water . . .

There's an ocean in her, but it all comes up onto me, onto the lake on the floor. Finally, she stops coughing and falls shaking against me, grabbing onto me with her cold sea creature hands. She's crying. She's crying so hard that I swear the rest of the ocean's leaving her, and here we are sitting wet and half dead in the middle of the flooded bathroom, and I'm sure we look like some nautical tragedy, the disaster of the Titanic in a South California bathroom.

"God, are you okay?"

She doesn't say anything, and for a while, I wonder if I failed, if I gave her a last painful breath so she can die in my arms.

"Come on, Buff, talk to me . . . say something . . . are you okay? Just say something . . ."

Something other than water comes from her mouth; she lets out a dry, ragged sob. "Why!" She tears away from me, sobbing. "WHY!"

I reach for her; she throws me off – and by that, I mean against the wall four feet away – and stands splashing back, trembling, looking at me with cold fury. Whether it's directed at me or not, I don't know, but it scares the shit out of me.

"I loved him _So. Much._" Her hands claw desperately at her hair, her face. Her nails rake rivers of blood out of her pale, softened flesh. "I don't understand! It's not fair! I was going to be with him. I was supposed to be with him forever."

I'm kind of not sure what's happening, but before I can figure it out, Buffy's wrenched the bathtub from its fixtures and it's in her hands, in the air and . . . she's thrown it through the wall. Plaster and tile and paraphernalia flutter dead and floating into the water as Buffy falls back to the sea, buckling and broken and dead.

**/ Sara /**

My muscles feel on fire. I wake up, and my hair and face are wet – I think with tears – and my heart is pounding so hard I can't breathe, beating flashes of black red black red though my head and veins. Beating out of my chest.

I look up. I'm half dead, splayed all over the stairs in the midst of the shampooed stairs. I cough, heavy, hard. Water flies out of my mouth in awful, sickening torrents.

"God."

I look up.

Reagan. 

**/ Reagan /**

Weightless. I mean . . . I'm dark and hollow and almost completely _weightless_. And then, suddenly, my world explodes. Fairly literally. There's a crack . . . a scream . . . of porcelain, the way it cries if you hit it against its kin, and a kind of reverberating explosion that echoes through my head and my very bones . . .

There's a landslide, and I rush with the water past a field of pain and slam against the sink. My head shocks yellow as I hit, and I look up at the horrorscape before me. White dust covers everything; there are shards of wickedly sharp porcelain littered everywhere, and running through it all is a river of red-stained water. It's pooled everywhere, around me, everywhere before me . . . and it takes a long time to realize that the reason the water's red is because I've been cut, a hundred, a thousand times, on all the wicked jagged edges of porcelain making an ugly, artificial coral reef in our bathroom.

Taking me out of my brief, almost drugged stupor is a sharp knock at the door. 

"Reagan?"

Sara. Damn it. What's a girl got to do for five fucking minutes alone to drown herself?

"Yeah." 

"Are you okay?"

I laugh. I start laughing, little and shrill at first, and then I'm doubled over and absolutely racked with these gasping, awful, hollow laughs. Am I okay? I'm sitting on the floor with a lapful of blood and glass. I'm just aces.

**/ Xander /**

She's breathing. Not dead. Thank you God. I think.

I kneel beside her, put my hands on her back. I can feel her bones through her flesh, she's so skinny . . . it makes me feel sick. She was so pretty . . . she looks like something dead, and she feels like something that was never alive.

"Honey . . . honey, come on . . ."

I turn her over, very gently. She's passed out. Carefully, I scoop her into my arms and stand with her. With her cradled in my arms, I walk back into the bedroom, past Lexi – I wonder how long she's been standing there, if she's been there the whole time – and lay her on the bed. I fish some flannel pajamas out of her drawer and dress her carefully, like a child. She's dead to the world, doesn't move. Gently as I can, I pull the blankets out from under her, and then cover her with them. I stroke her hair, gently kiss her forehead . . . nothing.

She's dead to the world. Seems kind of appropriate, when you think about it.

**/ Sara /**

Is she laughing?

**/ Reagan /**

Oh, fuck, it hurts. My belly, I'm sure, has become a swim bladder, and it's going to float me up right to the ceiling . . . it aches for want of water, and with hard wrenches as laughter grips my body . . . fuck, it's painful, but I can't stop, I'm besought with a demon . . . a fish demon, or the spirit of Virginia Woolf or . . .

Or me. Maybe it's all just me, and that's somehow scarier.

**/ Lexi /**

I probably should have stayed with Uncle Xander, but . . . he's worried and maybe didn't realize and . . .he put me back to bed. It's dry, at least, but

"Shouldn't you be asleep, darling?"

She's come back. She's sitting on the edge of my bed, wearing what looks like a bathing suit. It must be; Her hair's wet and crinkly all around Her face and She's got goggles around Her neck.

"You should go away," I tell Her. She smirks. "Go away, and leave them alone, and don't come back."

She laughs a little. It's a very high, tinkly bell laugh. Like music, but I don't like it. There's something wrong with it that makes me feel sick and heavy to hear it. It fills the room with black again, like before.

"Go away and never come back . . ." She stops laughing, suddenly. All the black rips out of the room and is used to fill Her eyes. "Did you really think that was going to work? Please. You're playing with the big kids, girl." 

"You're not playing fair."

"All's fair in love and war."

"And which is this?"

"Love . . . war . . . love _of_ war . . . it's all the same, Lexi. Passion. Pain. The drunkenness of the human spirit. It's all . . . it's all the same. All me."

"You're not love." 

She rolls Her eyes. "Of course I am. Love is dark and ugly and horrifically beautiful. Ever murder crafted is an act of love." 

"No it's not! That's hate."

"It's all the same. These things are not rigidly defined. They're liquid, and they all merge into each other. Passion . . . life and death, _love and hate_ . . . all the same ocean of humanity, perfectly in the realm of my being and completely within my control."

"That's not true!"

She raises an eyebrow. "Isn't it? You'll agree with me that murder is an act of hate, yes?"

There's something in the way She talks that makes me feel odd and kind of . . . like I'm out in the open, like I'm a Bambi and there's someone at the edge of the clearing waiting for me . . . but I say yes, because it's true, and I don't lie except for little small lies to Mommy or Daddy to make it so they don't worry – they worry enough already without me.

"So murder is an act of hate," She continues. "Even self-murder?"

She means suicide. I've heard the empty, frightening screams and whispers of the suicide victims in the ether. It's bad. It's a horrible, very bad thing, and I agree. Self-murder is a thing of hate. I say yes. 

Her eyes light, except when Hers do that, the whole glistening world disappears into Her through Her dark eyes. "But your mother," She purrs. "She was going to kill herself . . . why?"

I narrow my eyes. I don't mean to, but I can feel my face doing it, getting all hard and angry. "Because you tricked her, you –"

"She was _doing_ it because she was so in love with your father . . . isn't that an act of love?"

"You tricked –"

"—and that their love is so terrible that it can draw her under the undertow, face down into the water –" She smiles, because She knows that She's making me mad. "Isn't that a hateful thing?"

That sounds like something Daddy would say, and as soon as I think that, Her slender little frame moves like the escalator rail under your hand until She's broad and white and black out of the sun like a reverse painting, stripped down from watercolor to be one of Eve's sketches again.

"You have to understand," She says from inside Daddy, with his voice and the way he holds his hands when he's speaking, "that all these things are connected."

"Get out of him."

She does things that he used to do, little things. She cocks his head to the side a little, holds his eyes a little tighter than usual, like he always did . . . like he's studying me. Except the eyes are wrong; She can fake the way he looks and the way he moves and the way he works his mouth when he's looking at me listening, but She can't fake his eyes. They keep wanting to go back; they flicker from his human brown to total black. And back. And again, and again, and again.

"Lexi, listen, be reasonable about this –" 

"Stop using his voice and get out of him!"

She lowers his head. Then She looks down at his lap like he'd do when he was tired and sad. Slowly, like water freezing all fast like when they show things sped up on TV, and when She's frozen she freezes bronze like liquid gold cooling to metal, and when that's done She's smiling back at me and She's Mom. But She's not really Mom. She's wearing Mom over Her bones like another skin, and all you can see of Her is Her eyes when She can't make the green stick. 

"All right," She says in Mom's voice. "I'll leave him alone for a little while."

"You can't be her," I say. I'm starting to get very tired. "She's not yours to use." 

She furrows Mom's brow a little and holds her mouth into kind of a confused pout. "She's not? How come?"

I get mad at Her for pretending to be Mom. She's not just looking at her and moving like her, but She's talking like her too. It's like She's making fun of her. It makes me mad.

"She's alive. So she's not yours; you can't have her."

She smiles. "She's died twice. I can have her. I can have her anytime I want . . . and I can do anything I want with her."

In a flash, quick and blinding like lightning, she's naked and pale and wet. Like my dream but not. The dream wasn't from Her, and it's too hard for Her to see what They give me, so I know it's Mom how Mom looked in the water for real.

"Deal with _that_ for a minute," She says. Mom's voice and Mom's eyes stick for a minute. That's too much.

I scream. Loud. She looks really shocked, because She didn't see it coming and She doesn't know what it means. As powerful as She is, She's not very smart. Hate is blind.

My door opens all of a sudden. The light shoots in. When it touches Her, She disappears just as fast. Uncle Xander's making a dark spot in the doorway. "What's wrong, Lex?"

He comes closer, and I look up at him and raise my arms for Up. "Can I sleep with you? I had a bad dream."

**/ Reagan /**

Finally, the laughing starts to drain out of me like the blood coming from me in whispering dreamlike pooling. Finally, there are just whimpers, and when I bite my tongue and hold my

(_holding my last breath_)

breath, it stops to nothing, like it's been scabbed over.

I hear Sara shuffle outside the door. "Reagan?"

"I'm fine," I say, although I doubt she'd believe me even if my voice weren't shaking like this.

"I'm going to come in. I –"

"No!" I don't mean to yell at her, really. I'm just kind of shocked, all here in a bone yard of porcelain and glass, an ocean of tears and blood and . . . I'm just a little shocked, is all.

She doesn't say anything, and I know I've hurt her. Fuck, I didn't mean to. "Listen Sara," I try, this time, to make my voice even and nice. I try. "I . . . I'm okay. There's just . . . a lot of glass on the floor, so maybe you should stay outside?"

"Are you hurt?" 

"I'm cut a little. It's not . . . not anything." That's not what she wants; it's not what she's asking about. I know that, and she knows I know. No one says anything about it.

**/ Sara /**

For Christ's sake. Would it kill her to let me in? For once?

**/ Reagan /**

I stand, shaky, avoiding the shiny happy pockets of death sprinkled like candy all over the powder sugar floor. It hurts; it hurts like I'm tearing at the seams, like little hot pokers in my flesh. I know if I make a noise, she'll break down the damn door, like she always does, so I pray that I don't. I don't hear anything but the nervous murmuring of the glass and porcelain as it brushes past itself and over the floor, but that doesn't mean that I'm strong, that I'm silent, that God's working for me here. Coming solidly to my feet, standing up very firm. Then I shoot out a hand to the wall. Connect. I need . . . I feel like if I don't put up columns, if there's no support, my foundations will crumble into our seaside bathroom. What's that song, Daddy, about the man that built his house on the sand? I remember so many songs, they store up in my belly the same way stretch high-kick spin-kick turn live inside my muscles, but I can't remember that one. The words don't come to the surface of my skin from the murky dark deep where all the songs are stored, but I know – I know – that I'm him, small and dirty and God-fearing, sunburned and knee-deep in the sand, constructing my downfall with my own bleeding calloused hands.

Shaking, I grab a towel from the hanger on the back of the door – still standing, by some miracle – and wrap it around my broken frame. Stupidly, I push some of the hair out of my cut face and look at my reflection in what's left of the mirror hanging above the sink. Jesus. _Dig Ophelia._ I look like I succeeded, that I'm floating dead in a river somewhere.

_dig ophelia consider it dug_

"Well, color me dug."

"What?" 

Unconsciously, I turn toward the voice, toward the door. Pyramus and Thisbe. I fight back the urge to laugh again. I know if I start laughing, I won't be able to stop, and I'll shake myself apart. So I fight it.

"I . . . nothing, Sara."

"I –"

"Step back. I'm going to open the door." 

Obediently – and, probably, somewhat reluctantly – she shuffles away from the door. I hear her do it, I mean . . . I can see her in my mind's eyes, back against the wall – but still at the ready, always ready – watching for me expectantly, warily, watching the door like she an see me through it . . . . I swing the door open and she's looking at me, looking back at me exactly how I pictured her.

"You're hurt," she says, but she does it almost as a reflex. Her face doesn't even make that expression she usually pulls it into when I've done something stupid and reckless and she's worried about me. This might as well have been 'Say, it's Wednesday, isn't it?' or, for that matter, 'Look, it's raining frogs again.' The new, all-purpose Sara monotone. Just . . . spare me, okay? It's been a long fucking day full of antiquated rituals and suicide attempts and things, and frankly I'm a bit knackered, so just leave me the Hell alone. Try saving someone else for a change; I'm a goddamn superhero, I can save myself.

**/ Sara /**

She looks like the after shot in a bad horror movie. As in after the pretty young thing gets hacked to bits by the big bad kind of after. She's beyond pale, so pale that it looks like her skin isn't flesh anymore; she looks like she's made of wax. Hollow inside, and so delicate you can almost see the light shining through from the other side. Then into her candle-born skin, someone's heated a needle and drawn it across her face, hands, arms, legs . . . drawn it over her to part the wax, like they used to do with old dolls when they were made of paraffin. Not blood beyond that; just an endless vortex of dark. I don't know how many of these little portals there are; she said she'd been cut "a little." She looks like a slasher movie murder victim. That's no fucking little. But that's always it, isn't it? Reagan the Strong, Reagan the Independent, Reagan the STOIC. Slayergirl. And that's it.

Except that isn't it. I _know_ that isn't it, that it can't be. There used to be a little girl there, a little girl who played dress-up and put a frog in Julianna's toy teacup and crawled into Daddy's lap and begged for a story. She's there, I KNOW she's still there. I know she still feels, and that she would give anything in the world, her strength or her empathy or even her precious voice, she'd give anything to climb into Daddy's lap and just . . . it wouldn't matter what. But I know that, at least, she misses him and . . . well, that's something, I guess. 

But I don't know that it's enough. I mean, sure, be a Warrior, but be a person first, Reagan. It's just a job.

"What the fuck did you think you were trying to accomplish?"

She raises an eyebrow in that 'add-it-all-up-it-spells-duh' kind of way she adopted from God knows whom. "Taking a bath?"

"That –" The remembrance of seasickness pain in my stomach comes back hard like a pebble dropped a far way into the well of my belly. "That was _not_ what you were doing."

She turns away from me, starts walking down the hall. I follow her. "There was like . . . an explosion, or something . . . I don't know. It wasn't my fault."

She misunderstood me. That wasn't what I meant. I grab her by the shoulders, spin her around, and slam her against the wall. She's so shocked – eyes wide, mouth opened in surprise – that she forgets to run away. "That's not what I meant."

She opens her mouth in kind of a gasping fish way but I continue before she can come off with any long-suffering comment.

"I don't . . . what the _fuck_ were you trying to do?"

"I –" 

I take her by the shoulders and slam her against the wall again. She flinches hard, and I think it's more from shock than pain, even though she's bled through her towel and onto the wall behind her.

"It's not a _game_." She starts to say something and I preempt her by slamming her against the wall again. More blood, and she whimpers. "What the fuck did you think you were doing!"

She swallows thickly and starts crying again, very slowly and quietly. "I don't know. It just . . . it hurts so bad, I –"

I slam her against the wall again, twice in rapid succession. A picture a little ways down the hall falls and clatters to the floor, and Reagan cries out and starts crying harder. There's a wet, red stain all over the pale blue wall, and her towel's soaked through from her back to her thighs half way around her body. 

"It's not a game," I say again, but this time I manage to get my tone and volume under control. "It's forever, Reagan. Jesus Christ."

"I'm sorry," she says stupidly, and her voice is very little. "I didn't know what to do."

"So you thought you'd do that?"

I think she's afraid I'm going to throw her against the wall again, cuz she kind of flinches – no, not that, she kind of prepares to flinch. When I don't, when I just stand there looking at her, she falls over herself in order to fill the silence. "I just . . . I don't know; I just wanted to fix it, to . . . to make it stop, I . . ." She swallows, kind of thick, kind of nervously wets her lips. She wants to go. She wants to fly away; I make sure to place my body in a way so that she can't get away, can't go anywhere . . . she's fidgeting, eyeing Away, but she . . . she wouldn't dare. "You wouldn't understand," she says miserably, and the way she's looking, the way she's holding her body is like a dog struggling at the end of its tether. 

I narrow my eyes. "Wouldn't understand? What? About Dad?" 

Her mouth folds and unfolds in quick, insane fidgets like shiny red origami. "I, it's not just . . . I . . ." Her face folds into itself, almost; all the darkness suddenly evanesces from her and disappears into her like a reverse dragon lady, a noir star shot played on the reel backwards. "It doesn't hurt you like . . . you don't know how I feel . . ."

My mouth tightens. "Why not?"

"You didn't love –"

I smack her. Full across the face, really hard. All the blood that's left in her, every drop that's not on the bathroom floor or the wall behind her . . . it all flies to her face. She's silent, but she looks at me like . . . God, I've never seen that expression on her when she looks at me; she looks like I've completely betrayed her. 

Exactly how I'm looking at her right now. Exactly.

"I didn't love him?" I ask her, forcing my voice to be very even. She's stopped crying, so the only noise is me. "Is that what you were going to say?"

She doesn't say anything. She just looks at me all drawn and sullen. "I _did_ love him, Reagan. I did. We weren't . . . we weren't close, but I did love him." 

She doesn't say anything, still.

"And you think this isn't hard for me? Have you considered that it might be _harder_ for me? You had him. You were close to him; you talked to him and you know things about him. Real things. I will _never_ get to know him, Reagan. I will die, and I will not have known my father."

"I didn't mean –"

"Oh, sure you did, Reagan."

"I didn't –"

"Shut up, Reagan."

I start to turn and walk away, but she cries out – short, ragged – and my actions arrest. I don't turn back to her, but I don't go any further away, either.

"I didn't mean that," she whispers, and I turn back; she's crying again, tears running down her face and the red easing from it, almost so simultaneously that it's like one movement, the movement of the tides. "I really didn't. It's just you don't know what it's like, what it's like to be me, how it feels to . . ." She's been holding her hands out in front of her, gesturing with the stiff, severe movements some opera singers use; now, she just lets them fall like all the song's gone out of her. "If I have a minute to stop and think about it, I . . ." She stops again, leans back against the wall without flinching. She breathes in a thin breath that I think her heart needs beyond her lungs. "It just seemed like . . . maybe it would be a break, you know? Just one minute of quiet –"

"It's not _a minute_ of anything!" I'm screaming at her again. I don't mean to. She kind of bends under the weight of my volume, doesn't say anything, just kind of shrinks down and into herself. A refolding flower. She seems to be going in reverse a lot these days. "This is a FOREVER kind of thing, Reagan! If you want a break, take a nap, don't . . ." I take a breath, fix my tone. "Look, if there's something bothering you, we could talk –"

"And you'll make it better? You'll fix me? Sorry to break it to you, Sara, but there's no 'fixed.' We'll . . . we're just going to grind down to our bones, losing everything beautiful to us, until we shrivel into nothing and die!"

She's crying hard now, hysterical hurricane crying. Gale wind wails and ocean torrents of tears break from her, all of a sudden. The sound of wind over the waves seems to whisper around her without her even having to conjure it.

"Reagan, Dad didn't –"

"I am NOT talking about DAD!" Her face flushes dark, the angry heart of the storm in bright colors.

I don't get it. "I don't understand."

I say that, and all the wind filling her dissipates to nothing, and she's suddenly – quicker than a breath, a heartbeat – suddenly clear and calm. I wonder if she's okay, and then I wonder if it's just the Eye of the Storm staring me in the face. "I was talking about us," she says softly in a blue-grey kind of voice. "And about Mom."

"Mom?" 

"She has spent her whole life fighting for this world," Reagan says, her voice still even but starting to tighten a little around the edges. "And what does she have to show for it?"

"I –"

"She has a million sleepless nights, a dozen battle scars, a job that means nothing to no one, and a fucking COMA." 

"Reagan, she –"

"You know what she doesn't have?" There's a bite to her voice like lightning, and the question feels foreboding but I take the bait anyway.

"No." 

"She doesn't have any respect or appreciation from the thousands of people whose asses she saves nightly, and she doesn't have a fucking husband, or even her own sanity. She's thirty-five years old and she is fucking broken, Sara."

"I –" 

"And that's us, too. We'll be just like that, just another link in the long line of girls who spent their lives killing themselves inside and out – just to end up FUCKED."

"Reagan, that's not true; I mean –"

"It _is_ true. You have the dreams too; you know! You've seen it, you've seen it a thousand fucking times! What happened to Britta Kessler? That girl in the theater? She was betrayed by her _Watcher_. He was supposed to protect her, and he sold her out. And what about Samantha Kane, the girl in Salem? The idiot townspeople she spent her life protecting thought _she_ was a demon and burned her at the stake!"

"I –"

"That's us, Sara! You and me, forever." She kind of wilts, like her flower's folded for good or all the wind's gone out of her sail. "But it'll be me first, Sara. I –" Her lip trembles, and she cries. "We'll both fight, but it'll be me first, because I was just Chosen by default. You're the real Slayer, I –" She swallows again and looks at me without the tears. "I'm just your twin sister." 

What the Hell is she talking about? "Reagan, you're crazy. You're Chosen, too. You're a terrific fighter, just –" 

I was going to say 'just like me,' but she doesn't let me.

"Just like Dad," she says softly. "He was a fighter, too. He was, he fought the good fight for years, and – oh, I'm sure he was good . . . but what happened in the end, Sara?" – if she's going to say something about how he ended up dead, I'm going to smack her – "He ended up a schoolteacher, just the _Slayer's husband_." She lowers her eyes. "Second best. Just like me. And see, he died first, and he left Mom like . . ." She grimaces. "Like that, and . . . at least he didn't know. I mean, about being second best; oh, he knew, I'm sure he knew. But as for going first, for breaking Mom . . . ? No, he didn't know. But I know. When I leave, I'll have to shoulder that blame. My fucking death, my moment, and I'll still be second – my pain will be second to yours because when I die, I kill both of us." She whimpers, all of a sudden, and the tears start again, heavy and fat. "I just wanted to make it easy for you, Sara."

She's crying hard now, her shoulders shaking and her face in her hands, and I'm absolutely dumbfounded, standing in front of her paralyzed with thought. I look at her, absolutely petrified in that moment, and then it finally dawns on me that she's telling the truth. She honestly means, honestly believes everything she's said, and that it all hurts her so bad . . . finally, the numbness fires out of my extremities and I walk over cautiously and take my baby sister in my arms.

**/ Reagan /**

I don't know how we end up in my room, but somehow . . . here we are. And I feel stripped, not like naked but the sticky, white, not enough that a wall is when you strip the paint from it. Kind of messy and static but hollow and thin. I think maybe my blood's turpentine, but who knows.

I've cried and screamed and let so much out, there's not really a lot left in me, not enough to hold me up, so I just kind of fall against Sara and let her lead me into my room, set me on the bed. She brings me a new towel, one that's not soaked with water and blood, and dries my hair. I can remember Mom doing that, just like that, and I look up and I can almost see her in Sara – glimmers of Mom.

Doomed, I told you.

**/ Sara /**

She's . . . after all that, after absolutely baring her soul, scraping the meat off it and letting it fall to my feet . . . she's very fucking quiet, and it worries me. She lets me dry and brush her hair, but she shies away when I try to clean her wounds. I am too tired to fight that battle tonight; I'll let Giles or somebody tie her down in the morning and do it . . . I just get her some pajamas, something loose enough to not tear open the cuts as they try to heal, something soft enough to cushion her. Try to lessen the pain.

You know, the kind of pain I can touch.

I set the pajamas beside her; she doesn't really even notice, I don't think.

"Put these on."

After all the screaming, we've both resigned ourselves to this tired, soft voice. Not that she's saying much.

Slowly, she turns to the pile of fluffy pink PJ's. Like she's numb, frozen . . . like she's stiff, new plastic, she turns – swivels just around the waist, just like Barbie – and scoots them closer to her. With slow, subtle movements, the towel falls away and she turns away from me. Two, four, six seconds, tired movements, the pink's over her head, past the red on red on white, covering the dark flower of her tattoo like a false winter.

After a few minutes, she finishes the ritual of dressing for bed. Silently, she lies down across the length of her bed, curls up like a flower closing. I rise and turn the lights; by the time I come back to bed, she's already asleep, her eyes closed and her body moving in a gentle dance of deep sleep breaths.

It's a long time before I can sleep.


	8. Reaper in a Bottle

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

The sun came up warm and lazy the day after Angel Gryphon's funeral, lighting up the still-wet town like sparkling crystal. It found an open window on Crane Street, made a honeycomb of a dead man's bedroom. Inside the snug hive, Buffy Gryphon – the exact color and texture of honey herself, and still naked – stirred quietly. Her dark lashes parted, her wide eyes searched the new golden brilliance of her bedroom for a full minute before she realized where she was, before she remembered last night and who she was now.

With some drugged difficulty, she managed to struggle into a sitting position. Buffy looked around the room, set a new reality. _Every day for the rest of your life,_ she thought, _This is how it's going to be. For the rest of your life, you're going to go to bed alone and wake up just like this._

Gingerly, she brought her hands to her warm, honey supple flesh, let her hands rest over her collarbone, the graceful line of her neck, her breasts – all of that had been rainkissed last night; she'd made love to the storm. Well, that was the last time. Treat that trespass like a baptism . . . from now on, her sins were washed from her: her doubts, her fears, her lack of faith. Now she would be a virgin, named for him – was that blasphemous? No, she decided not. That was an act of purity, an act of love, and what was God if not that? Anyway, the religion of it didn't matter. Just the faith, and the healing. _I am going to get over this._ She paused, allowing herself a moment for clean, thoughtless breath. _Not_ him_. I will never get over him, but . . . I will do this without him, and I will be fine._

She came to her feet slowly, walked to the bathroom, intending to let the noise of the shower drown out any random remaining doubts that might compromise her new resolve. However, there appeared to be something wrong with the bathroom; with some difficulty, she recalled that old claw-footed bathtub she and Angel had maneuvered up the stairs twenty odd years ago . . . she remembered what she had done with it, and blushed with shame.

"I'm so sorry, Angel," she whispered. "I've been so bad."

She shook that off, shook her head and decided just to deal with the day head on. She went to her dresser – she wasn't ready for the closet just yet; Angel's things were still in there, and she was doing so well this morning – and pulled out some clothing. No, just that wasn't good enough. She went back until her jeans matched her blouse, until her socks were properly thick for wet winter and her bra didn't show through the pale lace of her shirt.

Then she chanced the mayhem of the bathroom. The mirror, it turned out, was still intact; with care, she fixed her hair and applied her makeup. After she'd finished, she stood in front of the mirror for a long time. Finally, she allowed herself a hesitant smile. She looked almost pretty; she looked almost normal. She shut off the light, closed the door, and walked downstairs.

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

Reagan, too, woke as the sunlight slipped into her room. As the warm wave invaded much in the same manner as she had come into her boyfriend's house last night, she awakened slowly, not opening her eyes until she was properly warm from the sun's shameless attentions.

She squinted briefly against the glare, and then turned onto her belly to check Sara's progress. Her twin was still asleep, snoozing quietly, cuddled in her blankets. Reagan sighed and let her body relax again against the plush of her bed. She lay there for a while, consumed with sensation and the pleasant weight of sleep upon her until

"Reagan?" 

Sara. Her voice was scratchy and small, almost high and slurred with the drunkenness of sleep.

"Hey," she whispered, her own voice colored with a soft rasp. She didn't move from facedown in the covers, but she could feel Sara shift beside her. Then, Sara's hands on her back, a delicate pressure dusting her hair off her face, moving softly over her skin.

"Your cuts are gone," Sara informed her.

Interest piqued a little, she turned her face to her sister. "Oh, yeah?"

Sara studied her for a moment, cocked her head a bit in mock scrutiny. "Yeah. You're pretty much healed, girl." She smiled a little. "Congratulations."

Reagan laughed a little, pulling herself up into sitting against the headboard.

"Thanks." 

A bit abashedly, she brought a hand to her face, slid her fingers over the cheek where a particularly deep cut had been. Yeah. Gone.

Sara sat back on her haunches, piled some blankets into her lap, around her arms. "So how are you?"

Reagan sighed and leaned against the headboard, letting her shoulders slump. "I'm not sure. Okay, I guess." She paused. "I'm not sure."

Sara didn't look surprised. "Me too."

Reagan lowered her eyes to her lap, watched her unscarred hands pick at a loose thread in her quilt. "I think I'm okay." Sara didn't say anything. "Maybe we should go downstairs."

Sara brought her knees up to her chest, hugged herself. "I don't know."

Reagan raised her eyes. She felt awkward, like she was wearing the wrong color or speaking louder than was necessary.

"We don't have to, if you don't want." That wasn't what she'd meant to say. "Are you okay?"

Sara looked almost startled. "I'm fine."

"It's okay if you're not."

She glared at her, annoyed. "Is it okay if I _am_?"

She waited for a reaction. She thought she might be pissed, but she wasn't. After a moment, Reagan smiled, and the tension broke. 

"Yeah," she said. "That's okay, too."

Suddenly filled with resolve, Sara turned and put her legs over the edge of the bed, came to her feet. Reagan watched this with interest, as if she wasn't quite able to connect this action with any apparent purpose.

"We should go downstairs," Sara said, upsetting Reagan as she began to make the bed. "Maybe someone's made breakfast."

"That would be nice," Reagan said slowly, walking to her dresser and searching for clothes. "Kind of in the mood for waffles." Without taking off her dress, she changed her underwear and put on socks, her back to Sara.

Sara shot her a look. "We had waffles yesterday morning, but you were too busy being a brat to have any."

Reagan turned made a face at her, but Sara missed it; Reagan pulled her dress off over her head and covered the whole thing. "I was _mourning_," Reagan complained, pulling on a pair of dark linen pants.

"About how much of a difference is there between mourning and being a brat, do you think?"

Reagan made another face, but Sara missed this one, too: Reagan interrupted the transmission by pulling on a black Lycra shirt. The shirt was tight, and that combined with the static of the material made Reagan's emerging head a mess of fuzzy hair; Sara took one look and couldn't stop herself from laughing. 

Reagan pouted, confused. "What?"

Sara managed to compose herself beautifully and replied, perfectly straight-faced, "Nothing, Chewbacca."

Reagan didn't understand the reference, but just then, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on her dresser. She made a small surprised noise and raised a hand to her wild mane.

"Oh, my."

Moving to the bureau, she ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame it. It didn't really work; fighting back giggles, Sara went over to her, helped her smooth the tangles out with her fingers.

"There," she said quietly after a moment, Reagan's hair smooth as her own now, their reflections nearly identical in the mirror. "There." 

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
the Gryphons' Kitchen**

Buffy stepped foot off the stairs and was immediately overcome with a warm, red and gold onslaught of pancakes. She walked toward the epicenter of the sunshine of breakfast smells, her gait slowing with each step nearer to the kitchen. When she reached the door she was all but fatigued, and stopped for a moment, leaning against the doorframe and looking into the bright room. 

Cordelia was at the stove, listening to bad rock on the radio and supervising the browning of batter on the griddle. The twins were at the table, helping themselves to flapjacks from the large butter-colored tower in the center of the table. They were chatting quietly, and there had been a change from last night. Reagan was dressed and had fooled with her hair and makeup; Sara's face was clean, her hair pulled back; she was still in her pajamas.

She could have stood there forever watching them – she was willing, even – but Cordelia turned briefly in her direction, sensing her presence, and raised a perfectly tailored eyebrow, indicating that no, Mrs. Gryphon, we are not going to play avoidance games today. Buffy smile a little despite herself as Cordelia turned back to her pancakes, her message received. Not wanting to be outed, Buffy came from her haven into the room, walked to the table and hugged and kissed her girls good morning. They looked a bit surprised to see her, but also obviously pleased, so she relaxed and sat down with them.

"Mom," Sara blurted, a bit wide-eyed.

Reagan grinned in a way that gave Buffy the distinct impression that her little girl had her number, and was not at all shocked to see her out and about.

"You're downstairs early," the girl said. "Feeling better?"

Buffy brought a hand to Reagan's face, petted her cheek, fingered her hair.

"You know, I am," Buffy replied carefully. She smiled at Sara and slipped her fingers from Reagan's hair, laid her hand over Sara's. 

"Cordelia made breakfast," Sara volunteered after a moment.

Buffy looked at the massive pile of pancakes in front of her, then over at Cordelia, still at the griddle. The brunette turned briefly and shot her a wry glance.

"I see that," Buffy said after a moment, for some reason suddenly verging on laughter. "Any good?"

Cordelia snorted from over at the stove, but didn't turn around. Buffy let out a little giggle, despite herself.

"Yeah, it's good," Reagan said, still smiling.

Sara, looking positively shocked at her mother's behavior, asked shakily, "Mom, are you okay?"

She forced herself into a straight face. "I'm just fine." Another giggle escaped from her and she covered her mouth as though she'd said something profane. "Fine."

Sara didn't look convinced. "Are you sure? Cuz you're acting a little . . ."

Buffy took a deep breath. It proved to be enough to stifle her mania and as the giggles subsided, she composed herself in posture and expression. "I'm fine, sweetie." She smiled a little. "I'm just . . . I'm happy. Today is going to be a good day."

"Amen," said Cordelia from the stove.

Buffy wasted a brief smile on Cordelia's turned back before resting her eyes on her girls again. "Do you have any plans today?"

Looking a bit caught off guard, they shook their heads slowly.

Buffy smiled.

"Well," she said, helping herself to some pancakes, "I think we should all spend some time together as a family. Do something lazy and dumb with everyone."

Sara smiled happily and nodded. Buffy brought her fork to her mouth, let her tongue bathe in the sweet cinnamon before continuing. "I'm kind of missing you all."

At the stove, Cordelia managed to keep herself from commenting as to whose fault _that_ was, and instead started singing along to the radio quietly and without half the words.

"We've been missing you too, Mommy," Sara informed her.

"You've been away a lot," Reagan said dully, her eyes suddenly downcast. 

Buffy reached a hand out to her daughter, tilted the girl's face so their eyes met. "I'm not going to be away anymore, okay? I'm gonna be here for you. For everyone."

A soft noise behind her caught her attention; Buffy turned to the kitchen door, where Michael was standing in bare feet and pajamas.

"Promise?" he asked hoarsely.

Buffy's brow took on a hurt expression and she held a hand out to her little boy. After a moment of hesitation, he ran into her arms; she hugged him tight.

"I promise," she whispered. "Mommy's gonna be here for you. We're going to be a family, and everything's going to be all right. Forever. I promise."

**Friday, December 29th, 2017   
the Gryphons' Home**

The five families returned to the Gryphons' home. By the time the sun's gold deepened to the intensity of noon, everyone was back in the house, and everyone had been hugged and kissed and reintroduced to each other and to the new state of the world. They sat huddled on the couches in the den, strategically placed blankets and pillows making a warm, safe nest for them to convene in. They talked and ate and watched stupid, comforting things on TV: old Disney movies, older home videos. Jules's little mermaid became a rush of song and color between Xander bouncing a camcorder through Wesley and Cordelia's wedding; Winnie the Pooh danced alongside Buffy in the hospital with newborn Michael. After a couple hours Buffy, trembling slightly, rummaged through the old cassettes and came up with something special and dangerous. They watched, at first with staunch silence and near tears, then with fond remembrance and gentle laughter, Angel teaching the twins how to ride a bicycle, Angel at Christmas, Angel proudly cradling newborn Lexi in his arms, Angel ducking the camera on several occasions. After a long time the television screen went dark, and Buffy shyly broached the subject that had nearly killed her two nights before.

Talking about him wasn't as hard as she'd thought it would be. After the first few initial bumps in the road, it came spilling out of her like water, and her friends gently coaxed it from her, letting her talk, occasionally adding something back: a fond memory, an amusing anecdote. After a few minutes, it didn't even hurt anymore; she wanted to talk about him, wanted to remember him. Even her children responded positively; although Michael and Sara shifted uncomfortably at first, they too were soon relaxed in the gentle tide of her reminiscing.

When dusk came, Giles and Wesley made dinner and Eve left the group to call her girlfriend. Buffy and Willow got down old photo albums and sat the large tomes on their laps, looking through the snapshots of their lives with laughter and only the occasional tear.

When supper was ready, they all settled around the table in the dining room, talking animatedly. Buffy insisted uncharacteristically on someone saying grace, and Giles said a quiet prayer before they ate. They ate Wesley and Giles's warm, comforting stew and drank a bottle of red wine from the cabinet over the stove. Buffy watched herself and only allowed herself enough liquor to be nicely warm, and mostly basked in the pleasant glow of the conversation and of being in a room with so many people she loved. After dinner she did the dishes while the adults had coffee and the children had cookies, and when that was finished, they sat around the tree and finally had Christmas.

When the festivities were over, Lexi and Rupert had fallen asleep on the couch, so Buffy put Lexi and Michael to bed. Everyone left soon after that, Xander carrying his sleeping son in his arms and kissing Buffy on the cheek goodnight.

Warm and happy and smiling slightly, Buffy collected stray wine glasses and discarded toys and then tucked her older children into bed before retiring herself. As she closed her eyes to sleep, felled with a pleasant warmth, she thanked God for all the small, beautiful things that helped her get through the miseries of late, for all the blessings that surrounded her. Prayer finished, she closed her eyes and succumbed to sleep.

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

He didn't know what had woken him, only that he was suddenly awake. He opened his eyes to the gentle glow of moonlight, the cool caress of night breeze . . . and her.

"Darla?" he asked, sitting up. His voice sounded shaky.

She smiled and held out a hand to him.

"Michael," she murmured. She had a lovely low voice, a voice like the one Mommy used when she told him bedtime stories.

"I haven't seen you in a long time," he said. He didn't take her hand, even though he wanted to. She let it fall to her lap.

"I know, sweetheart. I've been busy."

"My dad's dead," he said stupidly.

"I know, baby," she said softly, her voice full of all the compassion of the world. "I'm sorry about that, but it had to happen."

He lowered his eyes for a moment.

"I thought you were lying, before. My dad, he couldn't hurt people." He paused, raised his eyes. "But if he died, maybe you were telling the truth."

"He had to be punished," Darla said regretfully, shaking her blonde head in a morosely. "But don't worry, my love; things will be right again, soon."

He sniffled. "How? Is that why you came to see me?"

She smiled encouragingly. "Yes, baby." Her smile faded gently; she looked at him earnestly, her big dark eyes shining in the moonlight. "Michael, I need you to do something for me." 

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

_The rain was falling so fast and so thickly that she couldn't see the sky through it. When she looked up past the stone columns and great stairs that surrounded the courtyard and into the darkness of the night, there was no moon, no stars: just the continued mirroring movement of the rain._

"You didn't bring an umbrella," Angel chided her softly.

She looked over at him, taken aback. He'd worked at the high school for almost twelve years now, and she'd visited him many times . . . but the architecture was almost an exact replica of the school they'd destroyed in the final battle with the mayor, and somehow it always surprised her to see him there. He was leaning against one of the columns, under the roofed part of the courtyard. He was stone dry, but he'd still thought to bring an umbrella; it leaned against the column beside him, a thin black specter.

She forced her trembling mouth to form words. "I didn't think I'd need one." 

He raised his dark eyes to the sky.

"You were wrong," he said softly. He shook his head. "You should have seen this coming."

Frustration burned at her. "How? How should I have seen this coming?"

He smiled a little. "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

She wanted to hit him. "What does that mean?"

"It means," he said easily, taking his umbrella and walking away from the column, away from her, "that all the signs were there." He smiled. "Are there."

In a sleight of hand, he popped his umbrella open. He swept the black shell over his head and stepped into the rain. 

"You should have seen this coming," he said again, his head bowed beneath the dark bloom.

"Well, I didn't," she said sullenly. "I didn't see it coming, and I didn't bring an umbrella, and I don't know what to do." She frowned petulantly. "Is that it? Are you just going to walk off and leave me here?"

She raised her eyes to the immeasurable storm. She was frightened and cold, and the prospect of walking out into the wet night was terrifying.

Angel paused and turned in a music box ballerina's slow revolution to face her again. He wet his lips slowly, raised his eyes briefly to the sky that he could not see, and then lowered them back to Buffy.

"This is just the beginning," he said softly. "This will get much worse." He shook his head, then looked at her solemnly. "Just . . . look. If you can remember your history, you'll come out all right." He smiled. "Oh, and say hello to Asia for me, okay?"

He turned to go.

"Wait!"

He turned back to her slowly.

"Is that all?"

He paused for a moment in consideration, then dropped his umbrella to the sodden ground. He came forward and slid his arms around her waist. He pulled her body to his, then met her mouth, kissed her deeply. She slid a hand around his neck, holding them in that position, embracing and kissing and soaking wet.

He broke off slowly.

"I love you," he said earnestly, meeting her eyes. "And no matter what anyone says, you don't need me to take care of you. I've always thought you've done rather admirably on your own."

He kissed her again, softly. "Oh . . . but I do love you."

Slowly, painfully, he disentangled himself from her and turned into the dark night. After a few steps, he stooped slightly and retrieved his umbrella; it blossomed over his head like a black lily.

"And that's it?" she asked weakly.

He smiled.

"Isn't that enough?" he asked quietly, then turned and walked into the storm.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' Kitchen**

The next morning, as Buffy walked downstairs in her bathrobe to a bathroom that wasn't in ruins, she formed her schedule for the day. She would shower, get dressed, and make breakfast. Then she would clean up those stupid bathrooms, and have Xander determine the extent of the damage.

And then she would try to figure out what that damn dream meant.

Xander and Willow, Tara, and Chloe dashed her plans of making breakfast; the four of them snuck in while she was in the shower, and by the time she was properly dressed and made up, breakfast was already on the table.

"I was totally going to cook this morning," she said breezily, helping herself to some eggs and sausage.

"Sure, Buff," Willow said, forcing herself to blank face.

"We just thought we'd help out a little," Xander added in a practiced monotone.

"It's appreciated," Buffy said at length, "but I can do this stuff. Really. I'm okay. I am fully-functional Buffy again."

"That's good to hear," Willow said warmly, and hugged her. "We were kind of missing that girl." 

Buffy sighed ruefully.

"Me too." She swallowed another forkful of omelet and then looked hopefully to her two best friends. "Speaking of fully-functional Buffy, I was kind of hoping that you two would help me out with some projects today."

They exchanged looks.

"What kind of projects?" Willow asked cautiously.

"Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but the two upstairs bathrooms are out of commission."

Xander grunted. "I noticed. Someone threw a bathtub through the wall." 

Buffy blushed and lowered her eyes to her plate. "Anyway, I wanted to clean them up, and Xander –" With some apprehension, she raised her eyes to him, "—I was hoping you could give it a look and see how much work needs to be done on a non-Buffy level. You know, on a manly, plumbery level."

"You mean, how much work _I'm_ going to have to do to it."

She wrinkled her nose. "I didn't say that. I could always hire a contractor –" 

"I'll do it," he said with a slightly offended finality.

Buffy smiled into her orange juice, and then turned to Willow. "And Will . . . I had this . . . I had a weird dream last night, and I was hoping you could help me sort it out."

The witch put on her Concern Face. "What kind of dream?"

It seemed kind of difficult to remember now. Muddled, faded.

"I'm not sure," she started uncertainly. "It . . . it was raining. I was at the high school, outside, and it was raining, and Angel was there . . ."

She recounted the dream briefly, playing heavily on the dialogue and glossing over the part where he'd kissed her.

"That's weird," Chloe said helpfully when she'd finished, breaking the adults' silence.

"I know," Buffy agreed. "I mean . . . say hello to Asia? I don't –" 

"Maybe you're going on a trip!" Chloe suggested brightly. "Who do you know in Asia?"

Buffy thought a moment. "I don't know. Bruiser lives in Japan. And the Alliance has a headquarters in Bangkok. But that's . . . those are Angel's friends."

"Maybe the Alliance w-will expect you to honor Angel's c-commitment now that he's gone," Tara suggested quietly. Buffy looked over at her and she flushed, her voice going even quieter as she finished. "I mean, y-you've always gone with him when he's done favors for them; m-maybe they'll call on you to do their favors now."

Buffy shook her head sadly. "It's been years since we . . ." She stopped abruptly. Her voice was husky when she spoke again. "Do they even know he's dead?" 

Willow and Tara exchanged glances.

"I don't know," the redhead hazarded after a moment. "Cordelia took care of all that stuff."

Buffy shook her head. "Cordelia wouldn't have thought to call them, would she? I mean, they may not know he's dead, and they may need him for something . . . ." 

"We'll ask her later," Xander said encouragingly. "She's bound to show up here later today; we'll ask her then." He stood. "Now. Let's take a look at those bathrooms." 

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Wyndam-Pryces' Kitchen**

Wesley and Julianna were at the kitchen table, discussing the crossword puzzle and drinking tea. Cordelia was making toast and pouring cereal; she was bringing Julianna's Lucky Charms to the table when she had her Vision. Cordelia went down; the Lucky Charms, the milk, and the bowl all went up before joining her in a cacophony of crunching cereal and shattered glass. Her hands were cut; by the time Wesley had jumped up from his chair and slid through the spilt milk to kneel by her side and take her in his arms, she was bleeding freely. She didn't care; she couldn't feel it: the pain was in her head, was tearing her apart.

She hadn't had a Vision this powerful in years.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bathroom**

"Ouch." 

Buffy cut her finger on a shard of wickedly sharp porcelain; she retracted her hand violently and brought the wound to her mouth before she even thought about it. By the time she'd caught herself and brought the hand out for examination, the wound had healed. 

"Are you okay?"

Buffy smiled weakly at her friend.

"Sure, Xand. Fine."

She held up her unblemished hand as proof. He nodded dully and went back to fiddling with the pipes she had exposed and mangled in ripping the tub from its fixtures.

"What are you _doing_?"

Buffy looked up to the new voice in the doorway. Sara was standing there, arms crossed over her chest, looking at the two of them like they were somehow deficient. Although, upon reflection, Buffy could understand how she'd be a little disconcerted; they must look a little odd hunched over in the wreckage of her bathroom, covered in a fine white dust.

"Tidying up," she replied lightly. 

"What _happened_ in here?" Eve asked incredulously, coming into the doorway beside her sister and striking a nearly identical pose.

"Your mother threw a bathtub through the wall," Xander said dryly from his pipes.

Buffy shot him an extremely ugly look. He either didn't notice or was very adroitly ignoring it.

"I was upset," she said tightly.

"Remind me never to upset you," Sara quipped, toeing a stray piece of porcelain.

Buffy decided not to acknowledge her daughter's wisecrack and asked instead, "What are you two doing lurking around? Have you eaten?"

"We have eaten," Sara replied. "And we're lurking because there is exactly nothing to do around here."

"There's plenty to do," Buffy said brightly. "For starters, you could help clean up all this tile –" Her daughters started laughing before she could even finish. She cut herself off and frowned. "All right, fine. What are your brother and sisters up to?"

"Reagan and Lexi went to the park with Chloe and Aunt Tara," Eve answered. "But Michael's still in bed."

Buffy looked up, concerned. "Still? What time is it?"

"Eleven."

She frowned. "That's not like him. Have you checked on him?"

"Yeah. He doesn't feel warm or anything, and he's sleeping and I didn't want to wake him –"

Buffy nodded absently and stood, trying to beat the dust on her hands off on her jeans. It didn't work; her pants, too, were covered in the dust, and all that resulted from her efforts was a faint _poof!_ of dustcloud rising from the denim. 

"I'm gonna go check on him, Xander," she informed her partner. He grunted in response, busy fiddling around in his toolbox. 

"Girls, go help your uncle," she said briskly as she passed by them, giving them both a gentle shove in the right direction. They shot her dirty looks but went to help the reluctant plumber nevertheless.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017   
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

She opened his door slowly, walked quietly into the room and sat at the edge of his bed. He was, as Eve had attested, still sleeping; she watched the gentle rise and fall of his small body for a moment before laying a hand on his shoulder and very gently shaking him awake.

He woke with a little moan, his eyes opening only to little slits. He looked confused for a moment as his eyes adjusted to her. "D—I—Mom?" 

She smiled and stroked his face. "Hi, sweetie. I'm sorry to wake you."

"It's okay." It wasn't. He was very, very tired, and he hurt.

"I was just a little worried about you; it's not like you to sleep this late. Are you all right?" She frowned. "You're looking a little pale." She laid her hand on his forehead. Eve was right; she didn't feel any fever in him. 

"I'm fine," he said wearily, pulling away from her makeshift thermometer. "I'm just tired. Can I please go back to sleep?"

"You're sure you're okay? No stomachache, no sore throat, no –"

"No, Mom. I'm fine. Just tired." 

She sighed. "Okay. Just – lemme give you some Tylenol, just in case, and then you can go back to sleep, okay?"

He nodded unenthusiastically, but when she returned with the Tylenol, he took it without beat or question. After feeling his forehead again and inquiring once more about was he sure he was feeling alright, she had no choice but to just tuck him in, kiss his forehead, and let him go back to sleep.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017   
Wesley and Cordelia Wyndam-Pryce's Bedroom**

"I don't know what they're trying to tell me," Cordelia said weakly. Her voice was line-thin.

"Don't think too hard on it right now. Just try to relax; it'll come to you."

Wesley couldn't remember the last time he'd given that advice, but right now he was far from Watcher mode. Cordelia was weak, deathly pale; he was frightened for her. He offered her the glass of water again; she pushed it away, irritated.

"I can't ignore it! They're trying to tell me something important here." She shook her head. "We missed it before. Remember, the Vision I had before Angel's surgery? This is the same thing, those things without eyes . . . Wes, we _have_ to find out what this means. The PTB are very upset about it. This is something big."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bathroom**

"Is he okay?" 

Buffy frowned. "I don't know. He thinks so . . . I think he may be coming down with something."

"The flu's going around," Sara suggested from her knees at Xander's side.

Her mother nodded absently. "Right. Maybe it's that; it's always the fatigue thing first." She nodded again, looking a little vacant. "That's probably it." She shook her head, cleared it. "Making any progress?"

"We need a new pipe," Xander reported.

"Huh? Why?"

"Because this one has a big hole in it. Pipes with big holes in them do not carry water well."

She nodded stupidly. "Right. Duh. What kind of pipe? I'll go out and get it."

Xander started to rattle off shapes and dimensions when the phone rang. Sara and Eve took this as an opportunity to escape an afternoon of home repair fun, and both darted off to answer it. Xander started again to tell Buffy what he needed when Sara reappeared in the doorway with a phone in her hand. 

"It's Cordelia," she announced, thrusting the phone toward her mother.

"Cordelia?" Buffy echoed dully, taking the phone in a guarded, awkward way, as if she didn't really know what to do with it. "Cordelia _Chase_?"

Sara rolled her eyes. "How many Cordelia's do you know?"

Buffy eyed her daughter distrustfully. "What does she want?"

"Probably for you to stop talking to me and answer the phone," Sara said evenly. Buffy looked down at the receiver in her hand; she'd forgotten that she was holding it.

She brought the phone to her ear and chanced, "Hello?"

Cordelia's voice was biting. "How long does it take you to answer the phone?" she demanded.

"Good morning to you, too, Cordelia," Buffy said cheerfully.

Cordelia grunted. "Skip the pleasantries and put on your _kill things_ hat. We've got trouble." 

Buffy massaged her temples. Suddenly, she was fatigued. "What kind of trouble?"

Xander stopped what he was doing and looked up at her questioningly; she gave him an over-exaggerated shrug and listened to Cordelia.

"Vision trouble. We're having a meeting at the Magick Box in half an hour."

She sighed. "Can't it wait?"

Cordelia's voice was hard. "No. Are you coming or not, Slayergirl?"

"We'll be there," she said tiredly, and brought the phone away from her ear, pressed the _Talk_ button off, hanging up on the Seer. She looked up at Xander, still watching her expectantly.

"Cordelia had a Vision; we're gonna talk it over at the Magick Box in half an hour." She looked around the rubble for a moment. "I guess I won't have time to buy that pipe." She nudged a piece of sink. "Or do anything else."

Xander was looking at her with concern; she realized with some surprise that she was close to tears, face flushed, voice tight, hand holding the phone in such a crushing grip that she threatened to destroy this one, too, just like she'd broken the one in her bedroom when Angel had . . .

"Buffy?" he chanced, rising from the destruction and motioning Sara out of the room. The girl left silently, and he came closer to Buffy. "Are you all right?"

She took a deep breath, tried to calm herself. "I'm sorry. Yes. I mean –" Her grip on the phone tightened as she staunched a rising sob, and Xander took it gently from her. "—I just wasn't expecting to have a crisis so soon. I –"

"Did Cordelia say it was a crisis?"

She sniffled. "Well, no, but, I . . ." She whimpered. "I'm sorry. I've just been doing so well, and this took me by surprise, I –"

"You weren't expecting to have to do Slayer stuff while you're still grieving?"

She hadn't expected him to say that word, that horrible word, and it struck her so deep that she brought a hand to her mouth to keep herself from breaking to pieces. Grieving. Yes, she was still grieving, still a little bit dead inside, because he was dead, he was in the ground rotting and she was up here grieving and – 

Xander put an arm around her and drew her to him. She collapsed against him without realizing what she was doing, broke into tears before she realized that she'd let her guard down. 

"It's all right, Buffy, it's fine. I'll go; I'll take Sara, and you can stay here. You just stay here and work on cleaning up the bathrooms and taking care of Michael, all right? You stay here and do mom things, and we'll take care of the Slayer stuff."

Slowly, she extricated herself from his grasp. Wiping her face with her trembling hands, she managed to mutter, "I'm the Slayer. I should go –"

"Not right now you shouldn't. You're not ready. You stay here."

"I'll be okay. I don't even know why I'm so upset; it's just that I had that dream last night, and then the bathroom, and Michael's sick, and now I have to go fight evil, and . . ." She trailed off into tears again. Xander tried to hold her again, but she pushed him off and buried her face in her hands.

He waited for her to calm herself. After a brief moment, she'd stopped the tears and had brought her breaths back to normal, her hands away from her face. 

"We'll take care of it," he said slowly. "It's probably not anything big; probably just Cordelia being all high and mighty in her Seerness, right?"

Buffy didn't smile, but she nodded. "You'll call me, if you need me."

"Of course." He smiled and tried to touch her, to pat her shoulder reassuringly; she shied away from him again, like a wounded animal, curling into itself for protection. Wordlessly, she sank back to the ground, began again on her task of clearing the floor of porcelain debris.

Xander couldn't think of anything to say, so he just turned and left to collect Sara, closing the door on Buffy as he left.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Magick Box**

"But she said she'd _be_ here," Cordelia said angrily upon Xander's arrival with only one Slayer. "She's the goddamned Slayer; you'd think she could be bothered to come to meetings about evil doing. It's kind of her job or calling or whatever, and—"

Xander cut her off mid-diatribe. "She's not feeling well, Cordelia," he said softly.

"She sounded fine on the phone," the Seer spit. "Didn't sound like anything life-or-death had befallen her—"

"Well, it did, Cordy," he said tightly, ill at ease with this conversation, especially in front of the children. "You remember; you were at that funeral, too."

Cordelia shut her mouth immediately. Sara, taking her seat at the table, and Reagan, already seated after being summoned from the park, averted their eyes and looked distinctly uncomfortable. Giles noticed their expressions and shot Xander and Cordelia unpretty glares.

"Maybe we should get down to business," Wesley suggested awkwardly, unsmoothly filling the silence.

"Yeah," Cordelia agreed heatedly, seating herself at the table with angry grace.

"You had a-a Vision?" Tara asked nervously, readjusting her hold on Lexi, who was squirming in her lap.

"Yeah," Cordelia said, voice still hard. "Or, I guess, the same Vision again. Vision reruns." 

"Fun," Willow said weakly, not really knowing what to say, but feeling she ought to say something.

Cordelia shot her a furious glance. "Yeah, it was great. It was like having my spine rupture."

"I think we could do without the snark, Cordelia," Giles said wearily, taking off his glasses and cleaning them with a handkerchief. "Perhaps you'd like to recount your Vision."

She sighed. "Same Vision I had before Christmas. You know, the one we never worked on."

"Because Angel was _dying_," Xander snapped.

Reagan flinched.

"I'm not saying that we shouldn't have taken care of Angel! What I'm saying is –"

"Reagan and Sara are here," Tara broke in, her voice uncharacteristically firm. When that declaration had Xander and Cordelia both shut up and sufficiently shamed, she added artlessly, "And they weren't at the last m-meeting, so maybe you sh-should fill them in."

Cordelia took a moment to swallow her pride and compose herself before complying. "It's an old building or something. I don't know; I didn't really get a good look at the scenery. It's just old and falling apart, and it's cold. And there're all these guys, these – they're not people, but I'm not sure they're demons, either. They've got no eyes, they have these weird symbol things burned on where the eyes should be, and they're . . . they're preparing for something. Burning herbs, throwing bones."

"That's it?" Sara asked after a moment. "I mean, you couldn't zero in on a place or anything?" 

Cordelia shook her head.

"It's always cold," Lexi announced abruptly.

Tara looked down at her, concerned. "D-do you want your sweater?"

The toddler shook her head sullenly and quieted, and conversation continued on a less domestic track, with Sara turning her attention to Giles and asking, "What's with the blind guys? Are they a kind of demon or something?"

He polished his glasses with a spare handkerchief. "I don't know."

She traded a glance with her sister. They weren't used to Giles not knowing.

"You don't know?" Sara echoed.

"It's . . . familiar, but no, I don't know."

She was rattled, but undeterred. "Isn't there a book or something where we could look this up? Grolier's Big Book of Demons or something?"

He frowned. "Sara, you know research is more difficult than that –" 

"Well, then, we'll research." She was looking anxious. 

"Great," Chloe muttered from beside her mother.

Reagan – ignoring her friend's sentiment – sighed. "Where do we start, though? We don't really have a lot to go on. I mean, we've got no place, so we can't really beat around town. And we haven't got much to go on as far as identifying characteristics of this maybe-demon –"

"Hello, lack of eyes," Cordelia snapped.

"And that's it? That's your groundbreaking evidence? I don't mean to sound like a brat or anything, Aunt Cordelia, but I'm not really sure how to take care of this. I'm better with, you know, the going out and killing things. This needle-in-a-haystack thing isn't my strong suit."

"If you don't want to be here –" Willow started gently.

"It's not that," she said awkwardly. "I just . . . I don't know how to help."

"Don't be discouraged already, Reagan," Giles said softly, laying his hand over his Slayer's. "I know it seems . . . daunting, especially now, when you're so sensitive from other things, but we'll figure it out. You just need some patience, child."

She smiled a little at him.

Wesley cleared his throat. "All right. Now, where do we start?"

"No eyes," Sara said helpfully.

He'd meant that as a rhetorical question that he would himself answer, and Sara piping up knocked him off kilter for a moment. He quickly regained his footing and continued. "Yes, very good. Now, what does that suggest?" 

"No sight?" Chloe chanced. She was getting bored with all of this.

"Not necessarily," Willow started, and Chloe was sorry that she'd said anything. "In fact, blindness – especially the lack of eyes altogether – is often a telltale of telepathy, or precognition. Second sight."

"But . . ." Reagan was struggling with something. "It's not like they've got useless eyes, or that their eyes are just missing. Aunt Cordelia said that the symbols over their eyes were _burned_ there." 

"What's your point, honey?" Xander asked, but not unkindly.

"Well, it seems like their blindness was _caused_. That someone did it on purpose –"

"—and for a specific reason," Sara finished for her. She wrinkled her brow. "But why would someone –"

"Torture?" Cordelia stabbed.

"It's unlikely that someone would torture a group of people in one specific, horrible way and then not kill them, just leave them to heal and throw bones, dear," Wesley said gently. 

"Maybe it's a way of marking," Chloe suggested. "Like branding cattle."

"Some covens d-do mark their m-members like that," Tara agreed. "Although, if magic's involved, it's probably more likely that it-it's for a spell."

"What kind of spell?" Reagan asked. She looked troubled by the thought of anyone purposefully blinding anyone else.

"Like what I was talking about before," Willow said.

Tara nodded. "Right. Second sight, but n-not naturally."

"Magically-induced telepathy?"

She nodded again. "Yes."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "But why? That-that's kind of a big tradeoff, isn't it? I mean, your sight . . ."

Willow shrugged. "It depends on what's more important to you. Seeing the natural world, or having the means to go beyond that."

"But would a whole group do it to themselves?" Sara asked. Reagan had stopped asking questions, obviously very uncomfortable with the answers she was stirring up.

Chloe sniggered. "How could they? You need one guy to keep his eyes so that he can properly blind everyone else."

Willow scolded her, but Wesley followed up on Chloe's train of thought. "No, she's got a point. It's likely that the group didn't do it themselves –"

Sara smirked. "So, what? They hired a professional?"

He shook his head. "No, you misunderstand. It's likely that a higher being – the leader of their group, or perhaps the demon or god they worship – did it to them."

Reagan was looking ill. "That's sick." 

"But useful," Sara said slowly. "I mean, a whole group of psychics working for you has to be a good thing, right?" 

Wesley smiled at her. "Right."

Reagan was unconvinced. "Are you sure they're not being punished? Maybe they're in some hell-prison or something, and we've got to bust them out. Why are we assuming that they're the bad guys?" 

Giles's eyes passed over Cordelia's frowning face briefly before answering Reagan. "Cordelia drew some of the symbols burned over the eyes; they're Nordic runes. These are magic symbols; they have a purpose. It's not as though the eyes were just burned out. It doesn't indicate torture."

"It indicates a spell," Tara added.

"And that many psychics working their mojo doesn't seem like a good thing for us," Willow said. Reagan started to interrupt, but Willow preempted her. "And you're right: that's a cruel ritual. It's not really something that you'd associate with white magic, so it's safe for us to guess that they're the bad guys."

"Maybe they're just victims," Reagan said sullenly.

Willow shook her head. "No. If you're going to let your leader/demon/god/whatever blind you, and then keep working for them, you're devoted to the cause. These aren't prisoners, Reagan."

She was quiet for a moment, taking it in. Finally, she said, "Okay. I'll buy that. But what evil are they working for?"

Giles sighed. "That's precisely what we don't know."

"And what we need to find out," Cordelia said dully. "And _fast_."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' House**

Michael was having nightmares. His tiny body tossed about his bed; his little hands clawed at the sheets. Buffy stood in the doorway, watching as he shuddered and moaned. She lay a hand over her breast. Her heart hurt, felt like it was so twisted and heavy that it would just drop from her veins, fall away into the nothingness below. Her baby . . . 

"He's fine," she murmured to herself. "It's just fever dreams, he's fine . . ."

She shook her head. It was a difficult line to swallow; throughout five children, throughout a lifetime of Slayer dreams and monsters under the bed, and – still – when she thought of nightmares, she thought of Angel, of waking to the harsh jerk of his muscles, the tears on the pillow, that look on his face . . .

"He's fine."

She watched him until she couldn't stand it anymore, and then she tore herself from the room and went downstairs. She rifled through the Rolodex in the kitchen until she came up with the pediatrician. She dialed with a shaky hand, and then waited anxiously – bouncing on the balls of her feet, flexing the joints of her hands – until someone picked up. No, not someone; it was a machine. She sighed and glanced at the calendar on the far wall. Saturday. It was Saturday, and the only medical attention you can get on a Saturday was in an emergency room. She briefly entertained the thought of scooping her son up in his blankets and running him to the ER, but then she let reason in and realized that she was overreacting – they were just nightmares, he didn't even feel bad, he didn't have a fever or any symptoms, he was just sleeping a little late, she was just shook up because her husband was dead – and instead left a message asking for an appointment first thing Monday morning. She hung up on the machine and walked slowly back upstairs, fully intending to finish cleaning up at least her bathroom before Xander and the girls got home to help fix the pipes. Instead, she walked warily back to Michael's doorway. He was still tossing. She fought with herself for a moment, trying to decide how crazy she was being, before finally opting for overreacting and walking into the room and to his bedside. She lay a hand on his forehead; he was still cool, and he stilled some with her touch.

"Shhhh," she soothed, and then slowly lowered her body to the bed, lay beside him, holding him carefully. "It's gonna be okay, baby," she whispered. "Mommy's here. It's gonna be okay."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' House**

"You're home. Find the demon?" 

Sara and Reagan, both carrying, huge stacks of dusty old demonology books that were their homework for the next several hours, exchanged a look at Eve's glib welcome. Xander was in a snappish mood from the general disparity of the meeting, and was less amused by Eve's nonchalance, which was plainly evident not only in her tone but also in her posture: she was stretched across the living room couch looking lean and elegant and carefree, reading a Vogue which featured a very similar pose on its cover. This last fact escaped Xander completely but amused Reagan to no end; she snickered into her books only to receive an elbow in the ribs from her twin, who did not find the dual models funny in the light of their uncle's mounting irritation.

"Shouldn't you be upstairs helping your mother?" Xander asked, not bothering to check his tone.

Eve raised a dark, suspicious eye from her magazine.

"She's not messing around in the bathrooms anymore, Uncle Xander."

He sighed, concerned. "What's she doing?"

"Lying down." 

He started; images of Buffy locking herself in her room, images of what had happened to destroy the bathrooms in the first place flooded through his head.

"What? Is she all right? Have you checked on her?"

Eve looked confused. "I – no, Uncle Xander, I haven't checked on her. She's fine. She's just lying down with Michael; she's worried about him."

The tension eased from him. Kind of. He managed to banish the unpleasant pictures of Buffy's recent less-than-sane moments, but he still felt a bit ill at ease.

"Oh. Okay. I – um, I'll go check on her." He tried to assimilate his voice into something more manly and parental. "You, um, help your sisters. Or something." 

He jogged upstairs to check on Buffy. The three girls exchanged a look.

"He's a little stressed," Sara explained kindly, elbowing Reagan for giggling again.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

Xander was almost afraid to go inside after the kind of luck he was having with these kinds of things lately. Therefore, his progression was slow, and he paused long at the closed door, leaning beleaguered against the frame, listening vainly for helpful noises stirring from within.

When no helpful noises jumped out at him, he steeled his gumption, slowly opened the door, and walked in.

The room was dark despite the daytime hour; Buffy had drawn the blinds. Xander came to the small bed in the middle of the room and knelt quietly beside it.

"Buffy," he whispered.

She opened her eyes and sat up slowly, paying an inordinate amount of attention to her movements so as not to disturb her sleeping son.

"The pediatrician's office is closed today," she said thickly.

"It's always closed on Saturday, honey," he said gently.

"I thought about taking him to the emergency room –"

Xander closed his eyes in duress. _Oh, Buffy . . ._

"—he's been having these violent nightmares, Xander, and he's been sleeping all day, that's not like him –"

"He's probably just getting the flu, honey. It's going around. I don't think you need to worry; I don't think he needs to go to the emergency room."

"But what if –"

"—Even if he does have the flu, the doctors won't be able to give you anything for him; there aren't antibiotics for viruses. They'll just tell you to let him rest and make sure he drinks lots of liquids. You'd be doing more harm waking him up than –"

Buffy was looking distraught. "Do you think I should get him something to drink?"

Xander was quiet a moment, trying to compose himself. His mind was racing. _She's crazy,_ he thought. _She's upset over Angel's death, and now instead of grief she's giving Michael the plague when he doesn't even have a fever. This is insane._

Out loud, he said, "No. I think that you should stop worrying about Michael and get out of this room, get out into the house and do something productive."

She looked doubtful, lowering her eyes to her son's sleeping form.

"But Xander, he's sick; I'm his mother, I have to take care of him." 

"I think you're mothering him a little too much, Buffy," he countered gently. "I honestly think that what he needs right now is sleep. You –"

"But what if he wakes up and needs me? 

"Then he'll call for you, and you can come to him and get him whatever he needs. But you're not doing him any good sitting here, and I don't think it's good for you, either. You need to be up and around; you were going to be fully-functioning Buffy today, remember?"

She nodded reluctantly. "Okay."

Xander stood, extending his hand. Buffy took it, still looking unconvinced, and allowed him to help her to her feet.

"Come on, hon. We'll get you some lunch, and then we'll try and finish the bathrooms, okay?"

Buffy nodded mutely and halfheartedly followed Xander out the door. Her eyes stayed on her son until Xander closed the door behind her, blocking Michael from view.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Trade me."

Reagan raised a slightly annoyed eye to her sister. "What?"

Sara sighed. "I can't read this. It's so boring, I think my brain cells are actually trying to commit suicide. Important brain cells. Cells full of cheerleading routines and lip gloss application."

Reagan considered for a moment before shrugging and handing over her book. "Suit yourself."

Sara smiled and then brought her eyes down to the new text. She frowned; the eyes came right back up. "Not funny."

Reagan was a picture of innocence. "I agree."

She thrust the book back at her twin. "Take your stupid book back. It's in Greek." 

"It's actually Latin," she said slowly. "Unless you meant that in the way, like, 'it's all Greek to me,' in which case –"

Sara was very glad when the phone rang. Reagan wasn't; her phone was buried under a pile of dance clothes by her dresser, and it took her a moment to come up with it.

"Hello?" she asked breathlessly after finding the stupid phone and switching it on.

"Uh . . . Sara?"

She frowned and handed the phone to her sister. "It's for you."

She took the phone as Reagan came to her feet. "Hello?"

"Sara! Hi, it's Stephan."

Sara thought she felt herself blush. "Hi, Stephan."

Reagan rolled her eyes and left the room in search of a snack and airspace free of mushy platitudes.

"We just got back from my uncle's in San Francisco," Stephan said. "I mean, just now. I haven't even unpacked or anything."

"I – oh," Sara said. "Why'd you go to San Francisco?"

He chuckled a little. "Christmas, remember? We always have Christmas with my uncle . . ."

She shook her head. She'd forgotten about Christmas. "Right. I'm sorry. How was your vacation?" 

"It was really great. What'd you do over break?" 

Something heavy weighed on her chest. Was he serious? 

"Well," she said slowly, "I mean, we had the funeral and all."

There was a long pause on the other line. "Funeral? Sara, who died?"

The heavy thing was making it hard for her to breathe, let alone speak. _He didn't know. How could he not know?_ Stephan had been there during the surgery; he'd left for vacation after they'd brought Angel home. God, everything had happened so fast . . .

She took a deep breath. 

"My father," she whispered.

Another pause. "What?"

She cleared her throat shakily. "My father died, Stephan."

It felt incredible to say the words, ridiculous to have them hanging in the air. They weren't even in English. They required subtitles, and she wasn't surprised when a noise of disbelief came over the line.

"You're kidding me."

"No." She felt like she was going to cry.

"But – but I thought the surgery went so well. What happened?"

"I . . . I'm not sure. Complications from the . . . I don't know." The heavy thing sank to the bottom of her belly. She really didn't know; she hadn't wanted to ask. It was too horrible without details, without reasons.

"He's _dead_?" Stephan asked, his tone stilted by a harshness that suggested that he, too, required subtitles.

She whimpered. She didn't mean to. "Yeah. He died Christmas morning, before we all woke up."

"Oh my God, that's horrible . . . I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well, it's been bad," she said manically. She couldn't stop talking; now that she'd opened the floodgates, her whole life came pouring out. "He died, and Reagan tried to kill herself, and my mom went crazy, locked herself in her room and then ran out on the funeral –"

"Baby, shh," he whispered. "I'm gonna be right over, okay? I'll be right there."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Taylors' House**

Stephan ran through the kitchen, throwing the phone on the counter and grabbing his car keys out of the coin dish by the stove. His parents, chatting cheerfully at the breakfast table, looked anxiously at their son's frenzied dash.

"What's up, son?" Mr. Taylor asked genially from his coffee.

"I have to go to Sara's," he said absently, starting out the door.

His mother rolled her eyes. "I think you can wait a whole thirty seconds before running off to your ladylove, dear."

He frowned, stopping nonetheless. "This isn't a lust thing, Mom. She needs me." 

"I'm sure that she's survived eight whole days without you without major tragedy –"

"Her dad died," Stephan blurted.

His parents stopped smiling. "What?"

He sighed. "Her father died, and family's not really been dealing with it well. She said her mother's kind of gone off the deep end, and –"

Mr. Taylor sighed, rising. "Come on. You can explain in the car."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017   
the Gryphons' House**

"That looks like a healthy snack," Eve said cattily, walking by the couch where Reagan and her snack were sprawled.

"What? Graham crackers are healthy," she said defensively.

"S'mores are not, dancer girl," Eve countered, stealing an uncooked marshmallow and stalking off to her studio.

Reagan rolled her eyes at her retreating sister and laved chocolate off her knuckles.

"Screw Atkins," she muttered. "Marshmallows are good for morale."

She was on her third S'more when the doorbell rang. Annoyed and slightly sticky, she hauled herself off the couch and answered the door. 

"Hi," said Stephan awkwardly.

Reagan blinked a few times, surprised. Stephan wasn't that surprising, but it was a bit of a shock to find a crowd of three people shadowing the doorway. His parents, standing behind him, were grinning painfully at her. 

"Sara, dear," Mrs. Taylor said sweetly, squeezing past her son and into the Gryphon home. "You shouldn't let grief drive you into that all-black, heavy-eyeliner indie look; you're such a pretty girl, and –"

Reagan waited a beat and then turned and shouted upstairs for Sara. Her twin appeared at the top of the stairs in a moment, and Reagan shepherded the Taylors inside as she made her descent.

"I'm sorry about my mom," Stephan grumbled to Reagan as the girl slid past him to close the door. "She can't really tell you guys apart."

Behind him, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were discussing how difficult it was to tell those girls apart.

Reagan declined to comment on Stephan's apology; he had moved out of range anyway, going to scoop Sara up in his arms as she stepped off the stairs. Luckily for Reagan, Stephan's parents also swarmed to console her twin; Reagan took the opportunity to sneak away and up the stairs to her room.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

S'mores abandoned, morale was at a low. Pouting slightly, Reagan picked up the phone and called her own boyfriend. He answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi." She tried to make her voice sound husky and alluring. She wasn't sure it worked.

"I . . . who is this?"

She pouted some more.

"Reagan," she said, abandoning her try at phone sex voice.

"Oh, I – it sounded like you were coming down with something."

She sighed and closed her eyes in annoyance. "No, I . . . I just had something in my throat."

"How are you feeling? I mean, emotion-wise –"

"Fine," she said quickly. "You?" 

"Uh, I'm good. What are you doing?"

She sighed. He was hopeless on the phone.

"Well," she answered slowly, accidentally assuming a tone that was actually sexy. "I'm supposed to be studying some demon, but I can think of more enterprising uses of my time."

"Oh! Do you want to practice? Cuz I could call Scott, I'm sure he's up for it –" 

She took a deep breath. "I, um, I was thinking of something more . . . one-on-one."

"We don't really have much work to do on the time and vocals, Rags, maybe –"

She sighed. He wasn't great with innuendo, either. Or maybe she wasn't; she wasn't experienced enough to know.

"No," she said softly. "I was thinking more along the lines of spending all afternoon getting fucked by _you_."

There was a brief silence in which she could practically see him working his jaw in disbelief. Finally: "I – uh, um – I . . . I'll be right there."

There was a click of dial tone. Reagan hung up the phone and sat stone still at the edge of her bed, trying to work out the right breathing pattern to disintegrate the knot of tears that was weighing down on her heart.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bathroom**

"I'm sorry I didn't go to the hardware store to get your pipe, I –" 

"We'll go later. I can do other things before then; lots of stuff. Drywall, tiling . . . which brings me to my next question. That tub from your bathroom is toast; you're going to need a new fixture to replace it. Have you given any thought to what you want?" 

Buffy shrugged, a little distracted; she was rehanging mirrors and pictures that had been knocked from the walls, and it involved juggling several tools and objets d'art.

"I don't know. Another tub, I guess."

"Because I could just put in a shower, if you want, or a tub/shower combo; that way you wouldn't have to use that showerhead . . . it was pretty much just Angel that wanted that bath in the first place, wasn't it?" 

She was a moment in responding.

"I used to be big on baths. When I was in high school, and then again when I was pregnant . . . but since my last pregnancy, I only ever really took baths if I ambushed Angel while he was taking one. You're right. A shower is more practical; I don't really have room for unnecessary fixtures –"

"Oh, you poor thing."

Buffy, caught in thought, didn't notice Mrs. Taylor, the speaker, and her husband suddenly shadowing the doorway.

"What? I'm fine, it's not like I'm giving away his stuff, I just – oof."

She did notice them when they pounced on her in a flurry of polite hugging. Hammers, nails, and objets de art went tumbling to the floor.

"You poor dear," Mrs. Taylor continued. "You're so young to be a widow!"

"Sara told our Stephan all about what happened," Mr. Taylor picked up for her, wearing Concern Face. "We came as soon as we heard, brought Stephan over to see Sara. We are so sorry for your loss, he was a wonderful man –"

"—And look at you! He's been dead less than a week, and already you're doing heavy work around the house. Maybe you should hire a handyman, you should be sitting down –"

"Maybe I could get you a cup of tea," Buffy said weakly, anticipating a long, awkward bit of grief counseling.

"That would be lovely, dear, thank you for offering."

Buffy turned helplessly back to Xander, who was squatting in the refuse of tile and plaster and looking annoyed. 

"Sorry, Xand. Do you wanna come with us?"

"No," he huffed. "I should work on this. But you have fun."

_I'm sure,_ Buffy thought grimly as she walked the Trail of Tears down to the kitchen where she'd be making the Taylors tea and small talk. _Fun fun fun._

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' House**

They sat beside one another on the couch, knees not touching. They sat in silence: Sara was suddenly too exhausted to speak, and Stephan couldn't find any words to say. She looked so singular, so alone and sad. He wanted to touch her; he wasn't sure he was that brave. Sara was a virgin; every touch meant something more than it would mean with another girl. Another girl, a more experienced girl – or, you know, not _his_ girl.

Tentatively, he placed a hand on her knee. She was surprised, and she bristled, the muscles under his palm jerking quietly. She was surprised, and she started, but she didn't move from under him, didn't push him off.

She looked over at him, eyes placid – not hurt, not even surprised – mouth slightly parted, but silent. Like she'd started to speak and had the words arrest in her throat. Taking another leap, Stephan reached out and touched her sad face, letting the tips of his fingers dust lightly over the curve of her cheek. This time, she reacted; she let her eyes fall closed as if under exhaustion, and turned slightly away from him.

"Sara –" he started, then fumbled, "I'm sorry."

She turned her eyes to him.

"Don't be," she muttered. The words sounded like they had to work to escape her throat. "I shouldn't have – I didn't mean to –"

He wanted to hold her before she cried, but he was afraid to touch her again. Instead, he decided on another proactive measure, stood and offered his hand.

"Let's get out of here."

Her face remained expressionless.

"Come on," he urged. "Let's get out of here, take a walk."

"A walk," she echoed. 

"The fresh air will do you good."

There was a long moment where he wasn't sure how she'd react, and his stomach contracted nervously.

Finally, she spoke. "Let me get my coat."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

A scuffling noise at the window broke Reagan from her detachment. She turned as the window slid up and her boyfriend half climbed, half fell into her bedroom. He straightened himself awkwardly, grinning.

"Hey," he said good-naturedly, skipping pleasantries. "I know you look good breaking and entering, but you've got that Slayer grace thing going for you –"

She grinned and ran up to him, jumping lithely into his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist. He slipped his arms around her back to support her and kissed her softly.

"I don


	9. The Management of Grief

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

The sun came up warm and lazy the day after Angel Gryphon's funeral, lighting up the still-wet town like sparkling crystal. It found an open window on Crane Street, made a honeycomb of a dead man's bedroom. Inside the snug hive, Buffy Gryphon – the exact color and texture of honey herself, and still naked – stirred quietly. Her dark lashes parted, her wide eyes searched the new golden brilliance of her bedroom for a full minute before she realized where she was, before she remembered last night and who she was now.

With some drugged difficulty, she managed to struggle into a sitting position. Buffy looked around the room, set a new reality. _Every day for the rest of your life,_ she thought, _This is how it's going to be. For the rest of your life, you're going to go to bed alone and wake up just like this._

Gingerly, she brought her hands to her warm, honey supple flesh, let her hands rest over her collarbone, the graceful line of her neck, her breasts – all of that had been rainkissed last night; she'd made love to the storm. Well, that was the last time. Treat that trespass like a baptism . . . from now on, her sins were washed from her: her doubts, her fears, her lack of faith. Now she would be a virgin, named for him – was that blasphemous? No, she decided not. That was an act of purity, an act of love, and what was God if not that? Anyway, the religion of it didn't matter. Just the faith, and the healing. _I am going to get over this._ She paused, allowing herself a moment for clean, thoughtless breath. _Not_ him_. I will never get over him, but . . . I will do this without him, and I will be fine._

She came to her feet slowly, walked to the bathroom, intending to let the noise of the shower drown out any random remaining doubts that might compromise her new resolve. However, there appeared to be something wrong with the bathroom; with some difficulty, she recalled that old claw-footed bathtub she and Angel had maneuvered up the stairs twenty odd years ago . . . she remembered what she had done with it, and blushed with shame.

"I'm so sorry, Angel," she whispered. "I've been so bad."

She shook that off, shook her head and decided just to deal with the day head on. She went to her dresser – she wasn't ready for the closet just yet; Angel's things were still in there, and she was doing so well this morning – and pulled out some clothing. No, just that wasn't good enough. She went back until her jeans matched her blouse, until her socks were properly thick for wet winter and her bra didn't show through the pale lace of her shirt.

Then she chanced the mayhem of the bathroom. The mirror, it turned out, was still intact; with care, she fixed her hair and applied her makeup. After she'd finished, she stood in front of the mirror for a long time. Finally, she allowed herself a hesitant smile. She looked almost pretty; she looked almost normal. She shut off the light, closed the door, and walked downstairs.

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

Reagan, too, woke as the sunlight slipped into her room. As the warm wave invaded much in the same manner as she had come into her boyfriend's house last night, she awakened slowly, not opening her eyes until she was properly warm from the sun's shameless attentions.

She squinted briefly against the glare, and then turned onto her belly to check Sara's progress. Her twin was still asleep, snoozing quietly, cuddled in her blankets. Reagan sighed and let her body relax again against the plush of her bed. She lay there for a while, consumed with sensation and the pleasant weight of sleep upon her until

"Reagan?" 

Sara. Her voice was scratchy and small, almost high and slurred with the drunkenness of sleep.

"Hey," she whispered, her own voice colored with a soft rasp. She didn't move from facedown in the covers, but she could feel Sara shift beside her. Then, Sara's hands on her back, a delicate pressure dusting her hair off her face, moving softly over her skin.

"Your cuts are gone," Sara informed her.

Interest piqued a little, she turned her face to her sister. "Oh, yeah?"

Sara studied her for a moment, cocked her head a bit in mock scrutiny. "Yeah. You're pretty much healed, girl." She smiled a little. "Congratulations."

Reagan laughed a little, pulling herself up into sitting against the headboard.

"Thanks." 

A bit abashedly, she brought a hand to her face, slid her fingers over the cheek where a particularly deep cut had been. Yeah. Gone.

Sara sat back on her haunches, piled some blankets into her lap, around her arms. "So how are you?"

Reagan sighed and leaned against the headboard, letting her shoulders slump. "I'm not sure. Okay, I guess." She paused. "I'm not sure."

Sara didn't look surprised. "Me too."

Reagan lowered her eyes to her lap, watched her unscarred hands pick at a loose thread in her quilt. "I think I'm okay." Sara didn't say anything. "Maybe we should go downstairs."

Sara brought her knees up to her chest, hugged herself. "I don't know."

Reagan raised her eyes. She felt awkward, like she was wearing the wrong color or speaking louder than was necessary.

"We don't have to, if you don't want." That wasn't what she'd meant to say. "Are you okay?"

Sara looked almost startled. "I'm fine."

"It's okay if you're not."

She glared at her, annoyed. "Is it okay if I _am_?"

She waited for a reaction. She thought she might be pissed, but she wasn't. After a moment, Reagan smiled, and the tension broke. 

"Yeah," she said. "That's okay, too."

Suddenly filled with resolve, Sara turned and put her legs over the edge of the bed, came to her feet. Reagan watched this with interest, as if she wasn't quite able to connect this action with any apparent purpose.

"We should go downstairs," Sara said, upsetting Reagan as she began to make the bed. "Maybe someone's made breakfast."

"That would be nice," Reagan said slowly, walking to her dresser and searching for clothes. "Kind of in the mood for waffles." Without taking off her dress, she changed her underwear and put on socks, her back to Sara.

Sara shot her a look. "We had waffles yesterday morning, but you were too busy being a brat to have any."

Reagan turned made a face at her, but Sara missed it; Reagan pulled her dress off over her head and covered the whole thing. "I was _mourning_," Reagan complained, pulling on a pair of dark linen pants.

"About how much of a difference is there between mourning and being a brat, do you think?"

Reagan made another face, but Sara missed this one, too: Reagan interrupted the transmission by pulling on a black Lycra shirt. The shirt was tight, and that combined with the static of the material made Reagan's emerging head a mess of fuzzy hair; Sara took one look and couldn't stop herself from laughing. 

Reagan pouted, confused. "What?"

Sara managed to compose herself beautifully and replied, perfectly straight-faced, "Nothing, Chewbacca."

Reagan didn't understand the reference, but just then, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on her dresser. She made a small surprised noise and raised a hand to her wild mane.

"Oh, my."

Moving to the bureau, she ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame it. It didn't really work; fighting back giggles, Sara went over to her, helped her smooth the tangles out with her fingers.

"There," she said quietly after a moment, Reagan's hair smooth as her own now, their reflections nearly identical in the mirror. "There." 

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
the Gryphons' Kitchen**

Buffy stepped foot off the stairs and was immediately overcome with a warm, red and gold onslaught of pancakes. She walked toward the epicenter of the sunshine of breakfast smells, her gait slowing with each step nearer to the kitchen. When she reached the door she was all but fatigued, and stopped for a moment, leaning against the doorframe and looking into the bright room. 

Cordelia was at the stove, listening to bad rock on the radio and supervising the browning of batter on the griddle. The twins were at the table, helping themselves to flapjacks from the large butter-colored tower in the center of the table. They were chatting quietly, and there had been a change from last night. Reagan was dressed and had fooled with her hair and makeup; Sara's face was clean, her hair pulled back; she was still in her pajamas.

She could have stood there forever watching them – she was willing, even – but Cordelia turned briefly in her direction, sensing her presence, and raised a perfectly tailored eyebrow, indicating that no, Mrs. Gryphon, we are not going to play avoidance games today. Buffy smile a little despite herself as Cordelia turned back to her pancakes, her message received. Not wanting to be outed, Buffy came from her haven into the room, walked to the table and hugged and kissed her girls good morning. They looked a bit surprised to see her, but also obviously pleased, so she relaxed and sat down with them.

"Mom," Sara blurted, a bit wide-eyed.

Reagan grinned in a way that gave Buffy the distinct impression that her little girl had her number, and was not at all shocked to see her out and about.

"You're downstairs early," the girl said. "Feeling better?"

Buffy brought a hand to Reagan's face, petted her cheek, fingered her hair.

"You know, I am," Buffy replied carefully. She smiled at Sara and slipped her fingers from Reagan's hair, laid her hand over Sara's. 

"Cordelia made breakfast," Sara volunteered after a moment.

Buffy looked at the massive pile of pancakes in front of her, then over at Cordelia, still at the griddle. The brunette turned briefly and shot her a wry glance.

"I see that," Buffy said after a moment, for some reason suddenly verging on laughter. "Any good?"

Cordelia snorted from over at the stove, but didn't turn around. Buffy let out a little giggle, despite herself.

"Yeah, it's good," Reagan said, still smiling.

Sara, looking positively shocked at her mother's behavior, asked shakily, "Mom, are you okay?"

She forced herself into a straight face. "I'm just fine." Another giggle escaped from her and she covered her mouth as though she'd said something profane. "Fine."

Sara didn't look convinced. "Are you sure? Cuz you're acting a little . . ."

Buffy took a deep breath. It proved to be enough to stifle her mania and as the giggles subsided, she composed herself in posture and expression. "I'm fine, sweetie." She smiled a little. "I'm just . . . I'm happy. Today is going to be a good day."

"Amen," said Cordelia from the stove.

Buffy wasted a brief smile on Cordelia's turned back before resting her eyes on her girls again. "Do you have any plans today?"

Looking a bit caught off guard, they shook their heads slowly.

Buffy smiled.

"Well," she said, helping herself to some pancakes, "I think we should all spend some time together as a family. Do something lazy and dumb with everyone."

Sara smiled happily and nodded. Buffy brought her fork to her mouth, let her tongue bathe in the sweet cinnamon before continuing. "I'm kind of missing you all."

At the stove, Cordelia managed to keep herself from commenting as to whose fault _that_ was, and instead started singing along to the radio quietly and without half the words.

"We've been missing you too, Mommy," Sara informed her.

"You've been away a lot," Reagan said dully, her eyes suddenly downcast. 

Buffy reached a hand out to her daughter, tilted the girl's face so their eyes met. "I'm not going to be away anymore, okay? I'm gonna be here for you. For everyone."

A soft noise behind her caught her attention; Buffy turned to the kitchen door, where Michael was standing in bare feet and pajamas.

"Promise?" he asked hoarsely.

Buffy's brow took on a hurt expression and she held a hand out to her little boy. After a moment of hesitation, he ran into her arms; she hugged him tight.

"I promise," she whispered. "Mommy's gonna be here for you. We're going to be a family, and everything's going to be all right. Forever. I promise."

**Friday, December 29th, 2017   
the Gryphons' Home**

The five families returned to the Gryphons' home. By the time the sun's gold deepened to the intensity of noon, everyone was back in the house, and everyone had been hugged and kissed and reintroduced to each other and to the new state of the world. They sat huddled on the couches in the den, strategically placed blankets and pillows making a warm, safe nest for them to convene in. They talked and ate and watched stupid, comforting things on TV: old Disney movies, older home videos. Jules's little mermaid became a rush of song and color between Xander bouncing a camcorder through Wesley and Cordelia's wedding; Winnie the Pooh danced alongside Buffy in the hospital with newborn Michael. After a couple hours Buffy, trembling slightly, rummaged through the old cassettes and came up with something special and dangerous. They watched, at first with staunch silence and near tears, then with fond remembrance and gentle laughter, Angel teaching the twins how to ride a bicycle, Angel at Christmas, Angel proudly cradling newborn Lexi in his arms, Angel ducking the camera on several occasions. After a long time the television screen went dark, and Buffy shyly broached the subject that had nearly killed her two nights before.

Talking about him wasn't as hard as she'd thought it would be. After the first few initial bumps in the road, it came spilling out of her like water, and her friends gently coaxed it from her, letting her talk, occasionally adding something back: a fond memory, an amusing anecdote. After a few minutes, it didn't even hurt anymore; she wanted to talk about him, wanted to remember him. Even her children responded positively; although Michael and Sara shifted uncomfortably at first, they too were soon relaxed in the gentle tide of her reminiscing.

When dusk came, Giles and Wesley made dinner and Eve left the group to call her girlfriend. Buffy and Willow got down old photo albums and sat the large tomes on their laps, looking through the snapshots of their lives with laughter and only the occasional tear.

When supper was ready, they all settled around the table in the dining room, talking animatedly. Buffy insisted uncharacteristically on someone saying grace, and Giles said a quiet prayer before they ate. They ate Wesley and Giles's warm, comforting stew and drank a bottle of red wine from the cabinet over the stove. Buffy watched herself and only allowed herself enough liquor to be nicely warm, and mostly basked in the pleasant glow of the conversation and of being in a room with so many people she loved. After dinner she did the dishes while the adults had coffee and the children had cookies, and when that was finished, they sat around the tree and finally had Christmas.

When the festivities were over, Lexi and Rupert had fallen asleep on the couch, so Buffy put Lexi and Michael to bed. Everyone left soon after that, Xander carrying his sleeping son in his arms and kissing Buffy on the cheek goodnight.

Warm and happy and smiling slightly, Buffy collected stray wine glasses and discarded toys and then tucked her older children into bed before retiring herself. As she closed her eyes to sleep, felled with a pleasant warmth, she thanked God for all the small, beautiful things that helped her get through the miseries of late, for all the blessings that surrounded her. Prayer finished, she closed her eyes and succumbed to sleep.

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

He didn't know what had woken him, only that he was suddenly awake. He opened his eyes to the gentle glow of moonlight, the cool caress of night breeze . . . and her.

"Darla?" he asked, sitting up. His voice sounded shaky.

She smiled and held out a hand to him.

"Michael," she murmured. She had a lovely low voice, a voice like the one Mommy used when she told him bedtime stories.

"I haven't seen you in a long time," he said. He didn't take her hand, even though he wanted to. She let it fall to her lap.

"I know, sweetheart. I've been busy."

"My dad's dead," he said stupidly.

"I know, baby," she said softly, her voice full of all the compassion of the world. "I'm sorry about that, but it had to happen."

He lowered his eyes for a moment.

"I thought you were lying, before. My dad, he couldn't hurt people." He paused, raised his eyes. "But if he died, maybe you were telling the truth."

"He had to be punished," Darla said regretfully, shaking her blonde head in a morosely. "But don't worry, my love; things will be right again, soon."

He sniffled. "How? Is that why you came to see me?"

She smiled encouragingly. "Yes, baby." Her smile faded gently; she looked at him earnestly, her big dark eyes shining in the moonlight. "Michael, I need you to do something for me." 

**Friday, December 29th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

_The rain was falling so fast and so thickly that she couldn't see the sky through it. When she looked up past the stone columns and great stairs that surrounded the courtyard and into the darkness of the night, there was no moon, no stars: just the continued mirroring movement of the rain._

"You didn't bring an umbrella," Angel chided her softly.

She looked over at him, taken aback. He'd worked at the high school for almost twelve years now, and she'd visited him many times . . . but the architecture was almost an exact replica of the school they'd destroyed in the final battle with the mayor, and somehow it always surprised her to see him there. He was leaning against one of the columns, under the roofed part of the courtyard. He was stone dry, but he'd still thought to bring an umbrella; it leaned against the column beside him, a thin black specter.

She forced her trembling mouth to form words. "I didn't think I'd need one." 

He raised his dark eyes to the sky.

"You were wrong," he said softly. He shook his head. "You should have seen this coming."

Frustration burned at her. "How? How should I have seen this coming?"

He smiled a little. "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

She wanted to hit him. "What does that mean?"

"It means," he said easily, taking his umbrella and walking away from the column, away from her, "that all the signs were there." He smiled. "Are there."

In a sleight of hand, he popped his umbrella open. He swept the black shell over his head and stepped into the rain. 

"You should have seen this coming," he said again, his head bowed beneath the dark bloom.

"Well, I didn't," she said sullenly. "I didn't see it coming, and I didn't bring an umbrella, and I don't know what to do." She frowned petulantly. "Is that it? Are you just going to walk off and leave me here?"

She raised her eyes to the immeasurable storm. She was frightened and cold, and the prospect of walking out into the wet night was terrifying.

Angel paused and turned in a music box ballerina's slow revolution to face her again. He wet his lips slowly, raised his eyes briefly to the sky that he could not see, and then lowered them back to Buffy.

"This is just the beginning," he said softly. "This will get much worse." He shook his head, then looked at her solemnly. "Just . . . look. If you can remember your history, you'll come out all right." He smiled. "Oh, and say hello to Asia for me, okay?"

He turned to go.

"Wait!"

He turned back to her slowly.

"Is that all?"

He paused for a moment in consideration, then dropped his umbrella to the sodden ground. He came forward and slid his arms around her waist. He pulled her body to his, then met her mouth, kissed her deeply. She slid a hand around his neck, holding them in that position, embracing and kissing and soaking wet.

He broke off slowly.

"I love you," he said earnestly, meeting her eyes. "And no matter what anyone says, you don't need me to take care of you. I've always thought you've done rather admirably on your own."

He kissed her again, softly. "Oh . . . but I do love you."

Slowly, painfully, he disentangled himself from her and turned into the dark night. After a few steps, he stooped slightly and retrieved his umbrella; it blossomed over his head like a black lily.

"And that's it?" she asked weakly.

He smiled.

"Isn't that enough?" he asked quietly, then turned and walked into the storm.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' Kitchen**

The next morning, as Buffy walked downstairs in her bathrobe to a bathroom that wasn't in ruins, she formed her schedule for the day. She would shower, get dressed, and make breakfast. Then she would clean up those stupid bathrooms, and have Xander determine the extent of the damage.

And then she would try to figure out what that damn dream meant.

Xander and Willow, Tara, and Chloe dashed her plans of making breakfast; the four of them snuck in while she was in the shower, and by the time she was properly dressed and made up, breakfast was already on the table.

"I was totally going to cook this morning," she said breezily, helping herself to some eggs and sausage.

"Sure, Buff," Willow said, forcing herself to blank face.

"We just thought we'd help out a little," Xander added in a practiced monotone.

"It's appreciated," Buffy said at length, "but I can do this stuff. Really. I'm okay. I am fully-functional Buffy again."

"That's good to hear," Willow said warmly, and hugged her. "We were kind of missing that girl." 

Buffy sighed ruefully.

"Me too." She swallowed another forkful of omelet and then looked hopefully to her two best friends. "Speaking of fully-functional Buffy, I was kind of hoping that you two would help me out with some projects today."

They exchanged looks.

"What kind of projects?" Willow asked cautiously.

"Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but the two upstairs bathrooms are out of commission."

Xander grunted. "I noticed. Someone threw a bathtub through the wall." 

Buffy blushed and lowered her eyes to her plate. "Anyway, I wanted to clean them up, and Xander –" With some apprehension, she raised her eyes to him, "—I was hoping you could give it a look and see how much work needs to be done on a non-Buffy level. You know, on a manly, plumbery level."

"You mean, how much work _I'm_ going to have to do to it."

She wrinkled her nose. "I didn't say that. I could always hire a contractor –" 

"I'll do it," he said with a slightly offended finality.

Buffy smiled into her orange juice, and then turned to Willow. "And Will . . . I had this . . . I had a weird dream last night, and I was hoping you could help me sort it out."

The witch put on her Concern Face. "What kind of dream?"

It seemed kind of difficult to remember now. Muddled, faded.

"I'm not sure," she started uncertainly. "It . . . it was raining. I was at the high school, outside, and it was raining, and Angel was there . . ."

She recounted the dream briefly, playing heavily on the dialogue and glossing over the part where he'd kissed her.

"That's weird," Chloe said helpfully when she'd finished, breaking the adults' silence.

"I know," Buffy agreed. "I mean . . . say hello to Asia? I don't –" 

"Maybe you're going on a trip!" Chloe suggested brightly. "Who do you know in Asia?"

Buffy thought a moment. "I don't know. Bruiser lives in Japan. And the Alliance has a headquarters in Bangkok. But that's . . . those are Angel's friends."

"Maybe the Alliance w-will expect you to honor Angel's c-commitment now that he's gone," Tara suggested quietly. Buffy looked over at her and she flushed, her voice going even quieter as she finished. "I mean, y-you've always gone with him when he's done favors for them; m-maybe they'll call on you to do their favors now."

Buffy shook her head sadly. "It's been years since we . . ." She stopped abruptly. Her voice was husky when she spoke again. "Do they even know he's dead?" 

Willow and Tara exchanged glances.

"I don't know," the redhead hazarded after a moment. "Cordelia took care of all that stuff."

Buffy shook her head. "Cordelia wouldn't have thought to call them, would she? I mean, they may not know he's dead, and they may need him for something . . . ." 

"We'll ask her later," Xander said encouragingly. "She's bound to show up here later today; we'll ask her then." He stood. "Now. Let's take a look at those bathrooms." 

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Wyndam-Pryces' Kitchen**

Wesley and Julianna were at the kitchen table, discussing the crossword puzzle and drinking tea. Cordelia was making toast and pouring cereal; she was bringing Julianna's Lucky Charms to the table when she had her Vision. Cordelia went down; the Lucky Charms, the milk, and the bowl all went up before joining her in a cacophony of crunching cereal and shattered glass. Her hands were cut; by the time Wesley had jumped up from his chair and slid through the spilt milk to kneel by her side and take her in his arms, she was bleeding freely. She didn't care; she couldn't feel it: the pain was in her head, was tearing her apart.

She hadn't had a Vision this powerful in years.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bathroom**

"Ouch." 

Buffy cut her finger on a shard of wickedly sharp porcelain; she retracted her hand violently and brought the wound to her mouth before she even thought about it. By the time she'd caught herself and brought the hand out for examination, the wound had healed. 

"Are you okay?"

Buffy smiled weakly at her friend.

"Sure, Xand. Fine."

She held up her unblemished hand as proof. He nodded dully and went back to fiddling with the pipes she had exposed and mangled in ripping the tub from its fixtures.

"What are you _doing_?"

Buffy looked up to the new voice in the doorway. Sara was standing there, arms crossed over her chest, looking at the two of them like they were somehow deficient. Although, upon reflection, Buffy could understand how she'd be a little disconcerted; they must look a little odd hunched over in the wreckage of her bathroom, covered in a fine white dust.

"Tidying up," she replied lightly. 

"What _happened_ in here?" Eve asked incredulously, coming into the doorway beside her sister and striking a nearly identical pose.

"Your mother threw a bathtub through the wall," Xander said dryly from his pipes.

Buffy shot him an extremely ugly look. He either didn't notice or was very adroitly ignoring it.

"I was upset," she said tightly.

"Remind me never to upset you," Sara quipped, toeing a stray piece of porcelain.

Buffy decided not to acknowledge her daughter's wisecrack and asked instead, "What are you two doing lurking around? Have you eaten?"

"We have eaten," Sara replied. "And we're lurking because there is exactly nothing to do around here."

"There's plenty to do," Buffy said brightly. "For starters, you could help clean up all this tile –" Her daughters started laughing before she could even finish. She cut herself off and frowned. "All right, fine. What are your brother and sisters up to?"

"Reagan and Lexi went to the park with Chloe and Aunt Tara," Eve answered. "But Michael's still in bed."

Buffy looked up, concerned. "Still? What time is it?"

"Eleven."

She frowned. "That's not like him. Have you checked on him?"

"Yeah. He doesn't feel warm or anything, and he's sleeping and I didn't want to wake him –"

Buffy nodded absently and stood, trying to beat the dust on her hands off on her jeans. It didn't work; her pants, too, were covered in the dust, and all that resulted from her efforts was a faint _poof!_ of dustcloud rising from the denim. 

"I'm gonna go check on him, Xander," she informed her partner. He grunted in response, busy fiddling around in his toolbox. 

"Girls, go help your uncle," she said briskly as she passed by them, giving them both a gentle shove in the right direction. They shot her dirty looks but went to help the reluctant plumber nevertheless.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017   
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

She opened his door slowly, walked quietly into the room and sat at the edge of his bed. He was, as Eve had attested, still sleeping; she watched the gentle rise and fall of his small body for a moment before laying a hand on his shoulder and very gently shaking him awake.

He woke with a little moan, his eyes opening only to little slits. He looked confused for a moment as his eyes adjusted to her. "D—I—Mom?" 

She smiled and stroked his face. "Hi, sweetie. I'm sorry to wake you."

"It's okay." It wasn't. He was very, very tired, and he hurt.

"I was just a little worried about you; it's not like you to sleep this late. Are you all right?" She frowned. "You're looking a little pale." She laid her hand on his forehead. Eve was right; she didn't feel any fever in him. 

"I'm fine," he said wearily, pulling away from her makeshift thermometer. "I'm just tired. Can I please go back to sleep?"

"You're sure you're okay? No stomachache, no sore throat, no –"

"No, Mom. I'm fine. Just tired." 

She sighed. "Okay. Just – lemme give you some Tylenol, just in case, and then you can go back to sleep, okay?"

He nodded unenthusiastically, but when she returned with the Tylenol, he took it without beat or question. After feeling his forehead again and inquiring once more about was he sure he was feeling alright, she had no choice but to just tuck him in, kiss his forehead, and let him go back to sleep.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017   
Wesley and Cordelia Wyndam-Pryce's Bedroom**

"I don't know what they're trying to tell me," Cordelia said weakly. Her voice was line-thin.

"Don't think too hard on it right now. Just try to relax; it'll come to you."

Wesley couldn't remember the last time he'd given that advice, but right now he was far from Watcher mode. Cordelia was weak, deathly pale; he was frightened for her. He offered her the glass of water again; she pushed it away, irritated.

"I can't ignore it! They're trying to tell me something important here." She shook her head. "We missed it before. Remember, the Vision I had before Angel's surgery? This is the same thing, those things without eyes . . . Wes, we _have_ to find out what this means. The PTB are very upset about it. This is something big."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bathroom**

"Is he okay?" 

Buffy frowned. "I don't know. He thinks so . . . I think he may be coming down with something."

"The flu's going around," Sara suggested from her knees at Xander's side.

Her mother nodded absently. "Right. Maybe it's that; it's always the fatigue thing first." She nodded again, looking a little vacant. "That's probably it." She shook her head, cleared it. "Making any progress?"

"We need a new pipe," Xander reported.

"Huh? Why?"

"Because this one has a big hole in it. Pipes with big holes in them do not carry water well."

She nodded stupidly. "Right. Duh. What kind of pipe? I'll go out and get it."

Xander started to rattle off shapes and dimensions when the phone rang. Sara and Eve took this as an opportunity to escape an afternoon of home repair fun, and both darted off to answer it. Xander started again to tell Buffy what he needed when Sara reappeared in the doorway with a phone in her hand. 

"It's Cordelia," she announced, thrusting the phone toward her mother.

"Cordelia?" Buffy echoed dully, taking the phone in a guarded, awkward way, as if she didn't really know what to do with it. "Cordelia _Chase_?"

Sara rolled her eyes. "How many Cordelia's do you know?"

Buffy eyed her daughter distrustfully. "What does she want?"

"Probably for you to stop talking to me and answer the phone," Sara said evenly. Buffy looked down at the receiver in her hand; she'd forgotten that she was holding it.

She brought the phone to her ear and chanced, "Hello?"

Cordelia's voice was biting. "How long does it take you to answer the phone?" she demanded.

"Good morning to you, too, Cordelia," Buffy said cheerfully.

Cordelia grunted. "Skip the pleasantries and put on your _kill things_ hat. We've got trouble." 

Buffy massaged her temples. Suddenly, she was fatigued. "What kind of trouble?"

Xander stopped what he was doing and looked up at her questioningly; she gave him an over-exaggerated shrug and listened to Cordelia.

"Vision trouble. We're having a meeting at the Magick Box in half an hour."

She sighed. "Can't it wait?"

Cordelia's voice was hard. "No. Are you coming or not, Slayergirl?"

"We'll be there," she said tiredly, and brought the phone away from her ear, pressed the _Talk_ button off, hanging up on the Seer. She looked up at Xander, still watching her expectantly.

"Cordelia had a Vision; we're gonna talk it over at the Magick Box in half an hour." She looked around the rubble for a moment. "I guess I won't have time to buy that pipe." She nudged a piece of sink. "Or do anything else."

Xander was looking at her with concern; she realized with some surprise that she was close to tears, face flushed, voice tight, hand holding the phone in such a crushing grip that she threatened to destroy this one, too, just like she'd broken the one in her bedroom when Angel had . . .

"Buffy?" he chanced, rising from the destruction and motioning Sara out of the room. The girl left silently, and he came closer to Buffy. "Are you all right?"

She took a deep breath, tried to calm herself. "I'm sorry. Yes. I mean –" Her grip on the phone tightened as she staunched a rising sob, and Xander took it gently from her. "—I just wasn't expecting to have a crisis so soon. I –"

"Did Cordelia say it was a crisis?"

She sniffled. "Well, no, but, I . . ." She whimpered. "I'm sorry. I've just been doing so well, and this took me by surprise, I –"

"You weren't expecting to have to do Slayer stuff while you're still grieving?"

She hadn't expected him to say that word, that horrible word, and it struck her so deep that she brought a hand to her mouth to keep herself from breaking to pieces. Grieving. Yes, she was still grieving, still a little bit dead inside, because he was dead, he was in the ground rotting and she was up here grieving and – 

Xander put an arm around her and drew her to him. She collapsed against him without realizing what she was doing, broke into tears before she realized that she'd let her guard down. 

"It's all right, Buffy, it's fine. I'll go; I'll take Sara, and you can stay here. You just stay here and work on cleaning up the bathrooms and taking care of Michael, all right? You stay here and do mom things, and we'll take care of the Slayer stuff."

Slowly, she extricated herself from his grasp. Wiping her face with her trembling hands, she managed to mutter, "I'm the Slayer. I should go –"

"Not right now you shouldn't. You're not ready. You stay here."

"I'll be okay. I don't even know why I'm so upset; it's just that I had that dream last night, and then the bathroom, and Michael's sick, and now I have to go fight evil, and . . ." She trailed off into tears again. Xander tried to hold her again, but she pushed him off and buried her face in her hands.

He waited for her to calm herself. After a brief moment, she'd stopped the tears and had brought her breaths back to normal, her hands away from her face. 

"We'll take care of it," he said slowly. "It's probably not anything big; probably just Cordelia being all high and mighty in her Seerness, right?"

Buffy didn't smile, but she nodded. "You'll call me, if you need me."

"Of course." He smiled and tried to touch her, to pat her shoulder reassuringly; she shied away from him again, like a wounded animal, curling into itself for protection. Wordlessly, she sank back to the ground, began again on her task of clearing the floor of porcelain debris.

Xander couldn't think of anything to say, so he just turned and left to collect Sara, closing the door on Buffy as he left.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Magick Box**

"But she said she'd _be_ here," Cordelia said angrily upon Xander's arrival with only one Slayer. "She's the goddamned Slayer; you'd think she could be bothered to come to meetings about evil doing. It's kind of her job or calling or whatever, and—"

Xander cut her off mid-diatribe. "She's not feeling well, Cordelia," he said softly.

"She sounded fine on the phone," the Seer spit. "Didn't sound like anything life-or-death had befallen her—"

"Well, it did, Cordy," he said tightly, ill at ease with this conversation, especially in front of the children. "You remember; you were at that funeral, too."

Cordelia shut her mouth immediately. Sara, taking her seat at the table, and Reagan, already seated after being summoned from the park, averted their eyes and looked distinctly uncomfortable. Giles noticed their expressions and shot Xander and Cordelia unpretty glares.

"Maybe we should get down to business," Wesley suggested awkwardly, unsmoothly filling the silence.

"Yeah," Cordelia agreed heatedly, seating herself at the table with angry grace.

"You had a-a Vision?" Tara asked nervously, readjusting her hold on Lexi, who was squirming in her lap.

"Yeah," Cordelia said, voice still hard. "Or, I guess, the same Vision again. Vision reruns." 

"Fun," Willow said weakly, not really knowing what to say, but feeling she ought to say something.

Cordelia shot her a furious glance. "Yeah, it was great. It was like having my spine rupture."

"I think we could do without the snark, Cordelia," Giles said wearily, taking off his glasses and cleaning them with a handkerchief. "Perhaps you'd like to recount your Vision."

She sighed. "Same Vision I had before Christmas. You know, the one we never worked on."

"Because Angel was _dying_," Xander snapped.

Reagan flinched.

"I'm not saying that we shouldn't have taken care of Angel! What I'm saying is –"

"Reagan and Sara are here," Tara broke in, her voice uncharacteristically firm. When that declaration had Xander and Cordelia both shut up and sufficiently shamed, she added artlessly, "And they weren't at the last m-meeting, so maybe you sh-should fill them in."

Cordelia took a moment to swallow her pride and compose herself before complying. "It's an old building or something. I don't know; I didn't really get a good look at the scenery. It's just old and falling apart, and it's cold. And there're all these guys, these – they're not people, but I'm not sure they're demons, either. They've got no eyes, they have these weird symbol things burned on where the eyes should be, and they're . . . they're preparing for something. Burning herbs, throwing bones."

"That's it?" Sara asked after a moment. "I mean, you couldn't zero in on a place or anything?" 

Cordelia shook her head.

"It's always cold," Lexi announced abruptly.

Tara looked down at her, concerned. "D-do you want your sweater?"

The toddler shook her head sullenly and quieted, and conversation continued on a less domestic track, with Sara turning her attention to Giles and asking, "What's with the blind guys? Are they a kind of demon or something?"

He polished his glasses with a spare handkerchief. "I don't know."

She traded a glance with her sister. They weren't used to Giles not knowing.

"You don't know?" Sara echoed.

"It's . . . familiar, but no, I don't know."

She was rattled, but undeterred. "Isn't there a book or something where we could look this up? Grolier's Big Book of Demons or something?"

He frowned. "Sara, you know research is more difficult than that –" 

"Well, then, we'll research." She was looking anxious. 

"Great," Chloe muttered from beside her mother.

Reagan – ignoring her friend's sentiment – sighed. "Where do we start, though? We don't really have a lot to go on. I mean, we've got no place, so we can't really beat around town. And we haven't got much to go on as far as identifying characteristics of this maybe-demon –"

"Hello, lack of eyes," Cordelia snapped.

"And that's it? That's your groundbreaking evidence? I don't mean to sound like a brat or anything, Aunt Cordelia, but I'm not really sure how to take care of this. I'm better with, you know, the going out and killing things. This needle-in-a-haystack thing isn't my strong suit."

"If you don't want to be here –" Willow started gently.

"It's not that," she said awkwardly. "I just . . . I don't know how to help."

"Don't be discouraged already, Reagan," Giles said softly, laying his hand over his Slayer's. "I know it seems . . . daunting, especially now, when you're so sensitive from other things, but we'll figure it out. You just need some patience, child."

She smiled a little at him.

Wesley cleared his throat. "All right. Now, where do we start?"

"No eyes," Sara said helpfully.

He'd meant that as a rhetorical question that he would himself answer, and Sara piping up knocked him off kilter for a moment. He quickly regained his footing and continued. "Yes, very good. Now, what does that suggest?" 

"No sight?" Chloe chanced. She was getting bored with all of this.

"Not necessarily," Willow started, and Chloe was sorry that she'd said anything. "In fact, blindness – especially the lack of eyes altogether – is often a telltale of telepathy, or precognition. Second sight."

"But . . ." Reagan was struggling with something. "It's not like they've got useless eyes, or that their eyes are just missing. Aunt Cordelia said that the symbols over their eyes were _burned_ there." 

"What's your point, honey?" Xander asked, but not unkindly.

"Well, it seems like their blindness was _caused_. That someone did it on purpose –"

"—and for a specific reason," Sara finished for her. She wrinkled her brow. "But why would someone –"

"Torture?" Cordelia stabbed.

"It's unlikely that someone would torture a group of people in one specific, horrible way and then not kill them, just leave them to heal and throw bones, dear," Wesley said gently. 

"Maybe it's a way of marking," Chloe suggested. "Like branding cattle."

"Some covens d-do mark their m-members like that," Tara agreed. "Although, if magic's involved, it's probably more likely that it-it's for a spell."

"What kind of spell?" Reagan asked. She looked troubled by the thought of anyone purposefully blinding anyone else.

"Like what I was talking about before," Willow said.

Tara nodded. "Right. Second sight, but n-not naturally."

"Magically-induced telepathy?"

She nodded again. "Yes."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "But why? That-that's kind of a big tradeoff, isn't it? I mean, your sight . . ."

Willow shrugged. "It depends on what's more important to you. Seeing the natural world, or having the means to go beyond that."

"But would a whole group do it to themselves?" Sara asked. Reagan had stopped asking questions, obviously very uncomfortable with the answers she was stirring up.

Chloe sniggered. "How could they? You need one guy to keep his eyes so that he can properly blind everyone else."

Willow scolded her, but Wesley followed up on Chloe's train of thought. "No, she's got a point. It's likely that the group didn't do it themselves –"

Sara smirked. "So, what? They hired a professional?"

He shook his head. "No, you misunderstand. It's likely that a higher being – the leader of their group, or perhaps the demon or god they worship – did it to them."

Reagan was looking ill. "That's sick." 

"But useful," Sara said slowly. "I mean, a whole group of psychics working for you has to be a good thing, right?" 

Wesley smiled at her. "Right."

Reagan was unconvinced. "Are you sure they're not being punished? Maybe they're in some hell-prison or something, and we've got to bust them out. Why are we assuming that they're the bad guys?" 

Giles's eyes passed over Cordelia's frowning face briefly before answering Reagan. "Cordelia drew some of the symbols burned over the eyes; they're Nordic runes. These are magic symbols; they have a purpose. It's not as though the eyes were just burned out. It doesn't indicate torture."

"It indicates a spell," Tara added.

"And that many psychics working their mojo doesn't seem like a good thing for us," Willow said. Reagan started to interrupt, but Willow preempted her. "And you're right: that's a cruel ritual. It's not really something that you'd associate with white magic, so it's safe for us to guess that they're the bad guys."

"Maybe they're just victims," Reagan said sullenly.

Willow shook her head. "No. If you're going to let your leader/demon/god/whatever blind you, and then keep working for them, you're devoted to the cause. These aren't prisoners, Reagan."

She was quiet for a moment, taking it in. Finally, she said, "Okay. I'll buy that. But what evil are they working for?"

Giles sighed. "That's precisely what we don't know."

"And what we need to find out," Cordelia said dully. "And _fast_."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' House**

Michael was having nightmares. His tiny body tossed about his bed; his little hands clawed at the sheets. Buffy stood in the doorway, watching as he shuddered and moaned. She lay a hand over her breast. Her heart hurt, felt like it was so twisted and heavy that it would just drop from her veins, fall away into the nothingness below. Her baby . . . 

"He's fine," she murmured to herself. "It's just fever dreams, he's fine . . ."

She shook her head. It was a difficult line to swallow; throughout five children, throughout a lifetime of Slayer dreams and monsters under the bed, and – still – when she thought of nightmares, she thought of Angel, of waking to the harsh jerk of his muscles, the tears on the pillow, that look on his face . . .

"He's fine."

She watched him until she couldn't stand it anymore, and then she tore herself from the room and went downstairs. She rifled through the Rolodex in the kitchen until she came up with the pediatrician. She dialed with a shaky hand, and then waited anxiously – bouncing on the balls of her feet, flexing the joints of her hands – until someone picked up. No, not someone; it was a machine. She sighed and glanced at the calendar on the far wall. Saturday. It was Saturday, and the only medical attention you can get on a Saturday was in an emergency room. She briefly entertained the thought of scooping her son up in his blankets and running him to the ER, but then she let reason in and realized that she was overreacting – they were just nightmares, he didn't even feel bad, he didn't have a fever or any symptoms, he was just sleeping a little late, she was just shook up because her husband was dead – and instead left a message asking for an appointment first thing Monday morning. She hung up on the machine and walked slowly back upstairs, fully intending to finish cleaning up at least her bathroom before Xander and the girls got home to help fix the pipes. Instead, she walked warily back to Michael's doorway. He was still tossing. She fought with herself for a moment, trying to decide how crazy she was being, before finally opting for overreacting and walking into the room and to his bedside. She lay a hand on his forehead; he was still cool, and he stilled some with her touch.

"Shhhh," she soothed, and then slowly lowered her body to the bed, lay beside him, holding him carefully. "It's gonna be okay, baby," she whispered. "Mommy's here. It's gonna be okay."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' House**

"You're home. Find the demon?" 

Sara and Reagan, both carrying, huge stacks of dusty old demonology books that were their homework for the next several hours, exchanged a look at Eve's glib welcome. Xander was in a snappish mood from the general disparity of the meeting, and was less amused by Eve's nonchalance, which was plainly evident not only in her tone but also in her posture: she was stretched across the living room couch looking lean and elegant and carefree, reading a Vogue which featured a very similar pose on its cover. This last fact escaped Xander completely but amused Reagan to no end; she snickered into her books only to receive an elbow in the ribs from her twin, who did not find the dual models funny in the light of their uncle's mounting irritation.

"Shouldn't you be upstairs helping your mother?" Xander asked, not bothering to check his tone.

Eve raised a dark, suspicious eye from her magazine.

"She's not messing around in the bathrooms anymore, Uncle Xander."

He sighed, concerned. "What's she doing?"

"Lying down." 

He started; images of Buffy locking herself in her room, images of what had happened to destroy the bathrooms in the first place flooded through his head.

"What? Is she all right? Have you checked on her?"

Eve looked confused. "I – no, Uncle Xander, I haven't checked on her. She's fine. She's just lying down with Michael; she's worried about him."

The tension eased from him. Kind of. He managed to banish the unpleasant pictures of Buffy's recent less-than-sane moments, but he still felt a bit ill at ease.

"Oh. Okay. I – um, I'll go check on her." He tried to assimilate his voice into something more manly and parental. "You, um, help your sisters. Or something." 

He jogged upstairs to check on Buffy. The three girls exchanged a look.

"He's a little stressed," Sara explained kindly, elbowing Reagan for giggling again.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

Xander was almost afraid to go inside after the kind of luck he was having with these kinds of things lately. Therefore, his progression was slow, and he paused long at the closed door, leaning beleaguered against the frame, listening vainly for helpful noises stirring from within.

When no helpful noises jumped out at him, he steeled his gumption, slowly opened the door, and walked in.

The room was dark despite the daytime hour; Buffy had drawn the blinds. Xander came to the small bed in the middle of the room and knelt quietly beside it.

"Buffy," he whispered.

She opened her eyes and sat up slowly, paying an inordinate amount of attention to her movements so as not to disturb her sleeping son.

"The pediatrician's office is closed today," she said thickly.

"It's always closed on Saturday, honey," he said gently.

"I thought about taking him to the emergency room –"

Xander closed his eyes in duress. _Oh, Buffy . . ._

"—he's been having these violent nightmares, Xander, and he's been sleeping all day, that's not like him –"

"He's probably just getting the flu, honey. It's going around. I don't think you need to worry; I don't think he needs to go to the emergency room."

"But what if –"

"—Even if he does have the flu, the doctors won't be able to give you anything for him; there aren't antibiotics for viruses. They'll just tell you to let him rest and make sure he drinks lots of liquids. You'd be doing more harm waking him up than –"

Buffy was looking distraught. "Do you think I should get him something to drink?"

Xander was quiet a moment, trying to compose himself. His mind was racing. _She's crazy,_ he thought. _She's upset over Angel's death, and now instead of grief she's giving Michael the plague when he doesn't even have a fever. This is insane._

Out loud, he said, "No. I think that you should stop worrying about Michael and get out of this room, get out into the house and do something productive."

She looked doubtful, lowering her eyes to her son's sleeping form.

"But Xander, he's sick; I'm his mother, I have to take care of him." 

"I think you're mothering him a little too much, Buffy," he countered gently. "I honestly think that what he needs right now is sleep. You –"

"But what if he wakes up and needs me? 

"Then he'll call for you, and you can come to him and get him whatever he needs. But you're not doing him any good sitting here, and I don't think it's good for you, either. You need to be up and around; you were going to be fully-functioning Buffy today, remember?"

She nodded reluctantly. "Okay."

Xander stood, extending his hand. Buffy took it, still looking unconvinced, and allowed him to help her to her feet.

"Come on, hon. We'll get you some lunch, and then we'll try and finish the bathrooms, okay?"

Buffy nodded mutely and halfheartedly followed Xander out the door. Her eyes stayed on her son until Xander closed the door behind her, blocking Michael from view.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Trade me."

Reagan raised a slightly annoyed eye to her sister. "What?"

Sara sighed. "I can't read this. It's so boring, I think my brain cells are actually trying to commit suicide. Important brain cells. Cells full of cheerleading routines and lip gloss application."

Reagan considered for a moment before shrugging and handing over her book. "Suit yourself."

Sara smiled and then brought her eyes down to the new text. She frowned; the eyes came right back up. "Not funny."

Reagan was a picture of innocence. "I agree."

She thrust the book back at her twin. "Take your stupid book back. It's in Greek." 

"It's actually Latin," she said slowly. "Unless you meant that in the way, like, 'it's all Greek to me,' in which case –"

Sara was very glad when the phone rang. Reagan wasn't; her phone was buried under a pile of dance clothes by her dresser, and it took her a moment to come up with it.

"Hello?" she asked breathlessly after finding the stupid phone and switching it on.

"Uh . . . Sara?"

She frowned and handed the phone to her sister. "It's for you."

She took the phone as Reagan came to her feet. "Hello?"

"Sara! Hi, it's Stephan."

Sara thought she felt herself blush. "Hi, Stephan."

Reagan rolled her eyes and left the room in search of a snack and airspace free of mushy platitudes.

"We just got back from my uncle's in San Francisco," Stephan said. "I mean, just now. I haven't even unpacked or anything."

"I – oh," Sara said. "Why'd you go to San Francisco?"

He chuckled a little. "Christmas, remember? We always have Christmas with my uncle . . ."

She shook her head. She'd forgotten about Christmas. "Right. I'm sorry. How was your vacation?" 

"It was really great. What'd you do over break?" 

Something heavy weighed on her chest. Was he serious? 

"Well," she said slowly, "I mean, we had the funeral and all."

There was a long pause on the other line. "Funeral? Sara, who died?"

The heavy thing was making it hard for her to breathe, let alone speak. _He didn't know. How could he not know?_ Stephan had been there during the surgery; he'd left for vacation after they'd brought Angel home. God, everything had happened so fast . . .

She took a deep breath. 

"My father," she whispered.

Another pause. "What?"

She cleared her throat shakily. "My father died, Stephan."

It felt incredible to say the words, ridiculous to have them hanging in the air. They weren't even in English. They required subtitles, and she wasn't surprised when a noise of disbelief came over the line.

"You're kidding me."

"No." She felt like she was going to cry.

"But – but I thought the surgery went so well. What happened?"

"I . . . I'm not sure. Complications from the . . . I don't know." The heavy thing sank to the bottom of her belly. She really didn't know; she hadn't wanted to ask. It was too horrible without details, without reasons.

"He's _dead_?" Stephan asked, his tone stilted by a harshness that suggested that he, too, required subtitles.

She whimpered. She didn't mean to. "Yeah. He died Christmas morning, before we all woke up."

"Oh my God, that's horrible . . . I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well, it's been bad," she said manically. She couldn't stop talking; now that she'd opened the floodgates, her whole life came pouring out. "He died, and Reagan tried to kill herself, and my mom went crazy, locked herself in her room and then ran out on the funeral –"

"Baby, shh," he whispered. "I'm gonna be right over, okay? I'll be right there."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Taylors' House**

Stephan ran through the kitchen, throwing the phone on the counter and grabbing his car keys out of the coin dish by the stove. His parents, chatting cheerfully at the breakfast table, looked anxiously at their son's frenzied dash.

"What's up, son?" Mr. Taylor asked genially from his coffee.

"I have to go to Sara's," he said absently, starting out the door.

His mother rolled her eyes. "I think you can wait a whole thirty seconds before running off to your ladylove, dear."

He frowned, stopping nonetheless. "This isn't a lust thing, Mom. She needs me." 

"I'm sure that she's survived eight whole days without you without major tragedy –"

"Her dad died," Stephan blurted.

His parents stopped smiling. "What?"

He sighed. "Her father died, and family's not really been dealing with it well. She said her mother's kind of gone off the deep end, and –"

Mr. Taylor sighed, rising. "Come on. You can explain in the car."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017   
the Gryphons' House**

"That looks like a healthy snack," Eve said cattily, walking by the couch where Reagan and her snack were sprawled.

"What? Graham crackers are healthy," she said defensively.

"S'mores are not, dancer girl," Eve countered, stealing an uncooked marshmallow and stalking off to her studio.

Reagan rolled her eyes at her retreating sister and laved chocolate off her knuckles.

"Screw Atkins," she muttered. "Marshmallows are good for morale."

She was on her third S'more when the doorbell rang. Annoyed and slightly sticky, she hauled herself off the couch and answered the door. 

"Hi," said Stephan awkwardly.

Reagan blinked a few times, surprised. Stephan wasn't that surprising, but it was a bit of a shock to find a crowd of three people shadowing the doorway. His parents, standing behind him, were grinning painfully at her. 

"Sara, dear," Mrs. Taylor said sweetly, squeezing past her son and into the Gryphon home. "You shouldn't let grief drive you into that all-black, heavy-eyeliner indie look; you're such a pretty girl, and –"

Reagan waited a beat and then turned and shouted upstairs for Sara. Her twin appeared at the top of the stairs in a moment, and Reagan shepherded the Taylors inside as she made her descent.

"I'm sorry about my mom," Stephan grumbled to Reagan as the girl slid past him to close the door. "She can't really tell you guys apart."

Behind him, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were discussing how difficult it was to tell those girls apart.

Reagan declined to comment on Stephan's apology; he had moved out of range anyway, going to scoop Sara up in his arms as she stepped off the stairs. Luckily for Reagan, Stephan's parents also swarmed to console her twin; Reagan took the opportunity to sneak away and up the stairs to her room.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

S'mores abandoned, morale was at a low. Pouting slightly, Reagan picked up the phone and called her own boyfriend. He answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi." She tried to make her voice sound husky and alluring. She wasn't sure it worked.

"I . . . who is this?"

She pouted some more.

"Reagan," she said, abandoning her try at phone sex voice.

"Oh, I – it sounded like you were coming down with something."

She sighed and closed her eyes in annoyance. "No, I . . . I just had something in my throat."

"How are you feeling? I mean, emotion-wise –"

"Fine," she said quickly. "You?" 

"Uh, I'm good. What are you doing?"

She sighed. He was hopeless on the phone.

"Well," she answered slowly, accidentally assuming a tone that was actually sexy. "I'm supposed to be studying some demon, but I can think of more enterprising uses of my time."

"Oh! Do you want to practice? Cuz I could call Scott, I'm sure he's up for it –" 

She took a deep breath. "I, um, I was thinking of something more . . . one-on-one."

"We don't really have much work to do on the time and vocals, Rags, maybe –"

She sighed. He wasn't great with innuendo, either. Or maybe she wasn't; she wasn't experienced enough to know.

"No," she said softly. "I was thinking more along the lines of spending all afternoon getting fucked by _you_."

There was a brief silence in which she could practically see him working his jaw in disbelief. Finally: "I – uh, um – I . . . I'll be right there."

There was a click of dial tone. Reagan hung up the phone and sat stone still at the edge of her bed, trying to work out the right breathing pattern to disintegrate the knot of tears that was weighing down on her heart.

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bathroom**

"I'm sorry I didn't go to the hardware store to get your pipe, I –" 

"We'll go later. I can do other things before then; lots of stuff. Drywall, tiling . . . which brings me to my next question. That tub from your bathroom is toast; you're going to need a new fixture to replace it. Have you given any thought to what you want?" 

Buffy shrugged, a little distracted; she was rehanging mirrors and pictures that had been knocked from the walls, and it involved juggling several tools and objets d'art.

"I don't know. Another tub, I guess."

"Because I could just put in a shower, if you want, or a tub/shower combo; that way you wouldn't have to use that showerhead . . . it was pretty much just Angel that wanted that bath in the first place, wasn't it?" 

She was a moment in responding.

"I used to be big on baths. When I was in high school, and then again when I was pregnant . . . but since my last pregnancy, I only ever really took baths if I ambushed Angel while he was taking one. You're right. A shower is more practical; I don't really have room for unnecessary fixtures –"

"Oh, you poor thing."

Buffy, caught in thought, didn't notice Mrs. Taylor, the speaker, and her husband suddenly shadowing the doorway.

"What? I'm fine, it's not like I'm giving away his stuff, I just – oof."

She did notice them when they pounced on her in a flurry of polite hugging. Hammers, nails, and objets de art went tumbling to the floor.

"You poor dear," Mrs. Taylor continued. "You're so young to be a widow!"

"Sara told our Stephan all about what happened," Mr. Taylor picked up for her, wearing Concern Face. "We came as soon as we heard, brought Stephan over to see Sara. We are so sorry for your loss, he was a wonderful man –"

"—And look at you! He's been dead less than a week, and already you're doing heavy work around the house. Maybe you should hire a handyman, you should be sitting down –"

"Maybe I could get you a cup of tea," Buffy said weakly, anticipating a long, awkward bit of grief counseling.

"That would be lovely, dear, thank you for offering."

Buffy turned helplessly back to Xander, who was squatting in the refuse of tile and plaster and looking annoyed. 

"Sorry, Xand. Do you wanna come with us?"

"No," he huffed. "I should work on this. But you have fun."

_I'm sure,_ Buffy thought grimly as she walked the Trail of Tears down to the kitchen where she'd be making the Taylors tea and small talk. _Fun fun fun._

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' House**

They sat beside one another on the couch, knees not touching. They sat in silence: Sara was suddenly too exhausted to speak, and Stephan couldn't find any words to say. She looked so singular, so alone and sad. He wanted to touch her; he wasn't sure he was that brave. Sara was a virgin; every touch meant something more than it would mean with another girl. Another girl, a more experienced girl – or, you know, not _his_ girl.

Tentatively, he placed a hand on her knee. She was surprised, and she bristled, the muscles under his palm jerking quietly. She was surprised, and she started, but she didn't move from under him, didn't push him off.

She looked over at him, eyes placid – not hurt, not even surprised – mouth slightly parted, but silent. Like she'd started to speak and had the words arrest in her throat. Taking another leap, Stephan reached out and touched her sad face, letting the tips of his fingers dust lightly over the curve of her cheek. This time, she reacted; she let her eyes fall closed as if under exhaustion, and turned slightly away from him.

"Sara –" he started, then fumbled, "I'm sorry."

She turned her eyes to him.

"Don't be," she muttered. The words sounded like they had to work to escape her throat. "I shouldn't have – I didn't mean to –"

He wanted to hold her before she cried, but he was afraid to touch her again. Instead, he decided on another proactive measure, stood and offered his hand.

"Let's get out of here."

Her face remained expressionless.

"Come on," he urged. "Let's get out of here, take a walk."

"A walk," she echoed. 

"The fresh air will do you good."

There was a long moment where he wasn't sure how she'd react, and his stomach contracted nervously.

Finally, she spoke. "Let me get my coat."

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

A scuffling noise at the window broke Reagan from her detachment. She turned as the window slid up and her boyfriend half climbed, half fell into her bedroom. He straightened himself awkwardly, grinning.

"Hey," he said good-naturedly, skipping pleasantries. "I know you look good breaking and entering, but you've got that Slayer grace thing going for you –"

She grinned and ran up to him, jumping lithely into his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist. He slipped his arms around her back to support her and kissed her softly.

"I don


	10. Demon in Me

**Saturday, December 30th, 2017  
the Gryphons' Home**

The entire household worked till dusk: Buffy and Xander on repairing the bathrooms, the twins on finding Cordelia's blind prophets, Eve on the painting that had been eluding her since before her father's death, and Michael on repairing his little body from the trials it had endured. When the sun began to set Buffy insisted on everyone being properly fed, and summarily ordered Chinese food. Michael, briefly woken by his overzealous mother, could not be persuaded to eat (or drink, Buffy noted especially, becoming annoyed at Dr. Xander) anything, or come out of bed, so she checked his temperature for the umpteenth time (still no fever), gave him another Tylenol, and let him go back to sleep. By the time she'd done all that and phoned the pediatrician's answering machine again just to be safe, the Chinese delivery guy had come and gone, and most of the lo mein had been eaten, which brought her mind from her ailing son to the annoyance of being noodleless. Around that time, Willow, Tara, and Chloe returned with Lexi, whom they had been watching all day, and ate what little was left of the lo mein while Buffy wasn't looking. 

The twins took a study break to play with Lexi and Chloe while Willow and Tara joined Xander and Buffy as they resumed their restoration project. At eight thirty Cordelia called to see if anyone had found anything, and the twins felt shamed for taking so long off, so they put Lexi to bed and resumed their studies. Chloe couldn't decide which was less appealing, looking through dusty old books or sifting through dusty old tile and holding things to be hammered, but since the twins were needled and task-bent since Cordelia called, she spent less than ten minutes fooling around in there before drifting to the construction site to fool around. Xander actually put her to work, which was lame, but she got to play with the sledgehammer and the power drill and that was fun, so she managed to forget that she wasn't enjoying being there.

The construction crew left at eleven. When they'd gone, Buffy took a quick shower in the bathroom downstairs and got ready for bed, brushing her teeth and putting on her pajamas. Shower fresh and ready for bed, she checked on her children. By some miracle, Eve was out of her studio, in her pajamas in her room and talking drowsily to Annie on the phone; Michael and Lexi were both sound asleep; the twins had both fallen asleep on Reagan's bed while researching. She covered them up, cleared away some of the books, turned off their light, and left them to sleep before going to her own bedroom.

She was emotionally exhausted from her grief and the discussion of it, and physically exhausted from working on Xander's construction project all day. She found sleep quickly.

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017   
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

Reagan was woken by a grip of cold across her skin. She opened her eyes reluctantly; the window was open, and the frigid air washing over her was so cold she could almost see it . . . no, wait.

Darla took another drag from her cigarette. "Eve said I'd need the windows opened if I was going to smoke in the house. Smoke alarms or something."

"Eve would know," Reagan replied shakily, struggling to sit up without waking Sara.

"Does she smoke?" Darla asked, cocking her head a little. The moonlight and the smoke from her fag mingled and danced blue across her white skin and hair. White, white, like she was shaped from the smooth, suggestive inside of a shell. Eve had told her something about that once, about shells symbolizing women because . . . well, she looked like that, Venus de Milo. Delicate. Beautiful. And so white, even down to her dress . . . no, that's a nightgown, isn't it, delicate and thin like that . . . the tiny silk and lace thing clinging at her like smoke and moonlight. 

Reagan tried to clear her head of all the unneeded thoughts bombarding her. "Yeah. Those black clove things."

"You don't smoke, do you Reagan?"

Simultaneously, they both looked at her dresser; the cigarette Darla had given her . . . God, weeks ago . . . was sitting there next to her alarm clock. "No." 

"Why not?"

"I'm kind of weird about what I put into my body. I don't . . . I don't like drugs. I don't even like to take cold medicine and stuff."

"Why not?" 

"I don't know . . . I just—I need my body. I'm a dancer . . ." And, almost stupidly as an afterthought, "—and a Slayer, and I have to be in top shape all the time, or I could be . . . dead."

"Not because Daddy doesn't like it?" 

Something twinged in her. "I . . . no. Anyway, he used to smoke, sometimes, when he got tense or . . . something. And only when he thought we weren't looking." She felt cold, leaden all of a sudden. "Not that it matters. He's dead and gone; not like he'll be passing judgment on anyone."

"A good point," Darla drawled softly. "You'd do well to remember that."

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

_Buffy walked slowly into the kitchen. It was too hot, a world of unseasonable warmth; the heat blew at her face, and the sun was so bright in the room all she could taste was orange. Squinting, she looked past the yellow counters and pale wood, past the windows and doors pouring out sunlight like wine, to the clicks and pops of the stove. Angel was there in his burial clothes, stripped to his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up to reveal sweating forearms. His dark suit jacket lay folded beside him on the counter; beside it was an open carton of large white eggs. Her eyes flew over them; she counted five in the carton._

"Angel?"

He didn't turn around. She moved closer.

"How do you want them?" he asked, picking up one of the eggs, rolling it with his fingers up into his palm.

"What?"

He cracked the egg against the side of the steaming frying pan in front of him, separated the two fractured halves of the shell in his hand, and then let the heavy meat drop into the pan. It steamed and hissed; Buffy's stomach turned when she saw the yolk was a dark, insidious red and the white around it was more like blood than anything. He tossed the shell to the sink at his left. It folded like reverse origami with tiny little screams.

"How do you want them?"

She blinked and came closer to him. "I don't understand."

"Your eggs, girl." He motioned to the open carton at his elbow.

"I . . . I don't know. I don't know what to do."

"Well," he said. "I can fry them . . ."

He stirred the boiling, quivering, disgusting mass in his pan with a quick, silver spatula in his left hand. With his right, he picked up another egg.

"Or you could just have the whites; I'll take the meat . . ."

He cracked the egg and dropped it to the pan: another red egg. He separated the white and the yolk and then threw the trembling dark mass to the floor. Buffy flinched at the ugly noise it made as it hit.

"Or you could have the whole thing, but broken . . ." 

He picked up another egg, crushed it in his hands. The thin red white oozed into the pan, and then the fat yolk, dark with fractured bits of bright white hide stuck in it. The rest of the shell, mashed up with thick ribbons of red yolk, was cupped in his palm. He licked it off slowly. Buffy cringed.

"And you can always take them straight up. Raw."

He cracked another egg open and drank the insides raw like it was something liquor and red, vodka and cranberries. Buffy felt sick.

It was difficult for her to force the words past the nausea. "I . . . I don't want . . ."

Angel sighed.

"You'll have to make a decision, Buff," he said dully, and then turned to look at her. She would have screamed, but the sight froze everything in her. His face was rotting, dirt-covered, horrible. Beneath the decay, yellow eyes. 

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

"Why are you here? You said he needed to be punished, and he's been punished now, hasn't she?" She felt like she was going to break apart.

Darla was looking at her oddly. "What kind of punishment do you think death is, Reagan?" 

Reagan shook her head manically, suddenly on the verge of tears. "I don't know! I don't know anything about death!" 

"Nonsense," Darla admonished, looking at her steadily with her dark eyes, breathing out smoke like cobwebs of breath in cold air, "You're the Slayer. Death is what you do best."

She shook her head again, slowly, stubbornly. "No. No, that's not true. I help people."

Darla sighed and stubbed the cigarette out in her palm. Reagan flinched at the angry, sudden gesture.

"Well then," Darla said, voice firm, ominous. "You had best learn how to help yourself." A sudden shadow flickered across her pale face. "You're going to need a lot of help, Reagan."

The Slayer swallowed thickly. "What do you mean?"

She lowered her eyes briefly in thought. After a moment, she brought them back up, said suddenly, "You're a singer, Reagan, is that right?"

Reagan felt herself blush, but she wasn't sure why she was flushing. It was an innocent question, but it felt like trespassing, like Darla seeing her naked. 

"Yes," she answered uncertainly.

"What's that song, the one with the grapes of wrath in it?"

Reagan wrinkled her brow, completely lost. "What?"

Darla didn't acknowledge her question, or even appear to be listening to her. ". . . the grapes of wrath are stored, the coming of the Lord? Is that it?"

She flashed her dark eyes up to Reagan, who was sitting confused and frightened at the edge of the bed, hugging her knees. The girl trembled a bit, and Darla snapped the window closed in response, knowing full well that she wasn't cold.

"Well?" 

"Yes," Reagan replied hoarsely. "Something like that." 

Darla smiled a queer little smile of personal satisfaction . . . not of satisfaction in oneself, but in a happiness that is solely contained inside one being.

"I like that song, Reagan," she said quietly.

Completely flabbergasted and increasingly frightened, Reagan shook her head again.

"No," she pleaded, coming toward Darla, crawling toward her on her hands and knees. "No, tell me why I have to . . . what I have to learn. I don't understand."

Darla stood, smoothed her thin skirt over her legs. The moonlight caught up in the filmy fabric, played mirror tricks over her shapely thighs.

"You will," she promised throatily, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. 

Reagan stood after her, came toward her. "No. No, you can't leave it like that. You have to tell me what I need to know—" 

"You'll have to learn these things on your own, Reagan," she said silkily, as if it was of no importance. "I told you—" 

Reagan reached a hand out to take Darla by the arm, to stop her from leaving . . . she had to be seeing things; her hand passed through the pale skin and white lace like it was moonlight. "Darla, please."

She pursed her lips, took a very definite step back. "No. I told you. I am not the teacher."

"What are you, then? Why come here, why tell me all these things if you're not going to help me?"

Reagan took a step toward her, went to take her physically, force her to stay, but a sharp pain wrenched through her womb and she twisted violently in half, bending severely and grabbing her abdomen, almost falling to her knees. Darla looked down on her, almost smiling.

"Maybe that's your teacher there, Reagan," she said softly, looking wicked and completely unconcerned with this wickedness.

"I—" she gasped. It hurt, Christ, it hurt so bad . . . she had never felt it like this. "There's someone in the house," she panted, finally realizing what it was Darla wanted her to understand.

"Yes," Darla said sagely.

Reagan swallowed so hard she nearly coughed all the air and strength right back up. "Something . . . not human." 

Darla smiled. "Right again."

Shakily, she came to her feet. "What do you know about this?"

Darla narrowed her eyes at the girl. "It's not my place to say." Reagan started to protest, but Darla cut her off. "You have to learn these things for yourself."

Reagan took in some deep breaths, ruminating. The pain was starting to lessen. "Where?"

Darla weighed this for a moment, deciding whether or not it was safe to give her this information. "Downstairs. The kitchen, I think." 

"Is it a demon?"

Darla smiled sweetly.

"Could be. Of course," she added as Reagan rushed past her, out of the room, "it could be an angel!"

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

Buffy woke up in time to hear a door close down the hall and feet on the stairs. 

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
the Gryphons' Kitchen**

Something wrong, unstill and buzzing with energy there in the dark. Something worrying. She felt something cold and surreal as she walked into the kitchen.

At the first step onto the eternally warming sunflower yellow tiles, her breath came foreign, stale. Shot of pain. A tight, gnawing cramp through her lower abdomen. She felt like she was on foreign soil, heard the whispers of something ancient rush through her with her pulse. 

Quickly and without thought, she scanned the shadows, stretched geometric shapes lying twisted and tortured over the walls and floors. Dark, dark, nothing. The used condom throw of the refrigerator against the opposing wall, the broken bones scarecrow of the plant in the window, leaves as limbs twisted at impossible, sickening angles. Nothing, nothing . . . then, out of the corner of her eye, a slight shimmer. A change in light. No, movement. She turned violently back, facing the flicker, dark curtain of her hair flying like a flock of ravens in a whisper, resting tangled against her face and throat with the same nervous unstillness of the birds. Eyes crossing over the void, once, twice – the flash again, an uncertain curve of pale in the dark.

She took a step forward, one hand running over the countertop to her right, searching for a weapon. None. In her haste, her alarm at the pain and at Darla's message, she'd forgotten to bring any artillery with her from her room, and now she was vulnerable, alone with the mystery visitor in her pajamas and bare feet. Her wandering fingers closed over bursts of smooth, cool . . . wooden spoon, forgotten cup. Nothing.

"Who's there?"

The direct approach, then. She waited, the tightness in her abdomen throbbing, hitting her all of a sudden with a lost breath and a heated wave of nausea as the alabaster in the shadows moved again. It didn't move right, what _moved_ like that, like . . . wings? Darla had said that maybe it was an angel— 

"Reagan."

The voice was low, wet and crumbling with tears. It ran Colorado River copper into her, filling her with cold, blood-smelling fear, a rise of tears and thickness in her own throat.

"Reagan . . ."

A need now, in the voice. A stab of hurt to her heart.

Shaking, resolve turned to nothing by the broad washing strokes of the river, she stepped quickly back, stopping only when the counter at the small of her back forced her to. Still, she reached back with one shaking hand, as if that made her somehow further from this. A brush of wood made her jump; the spoon again. She curled her fingers around it, clutching it defensively as if it could save her.

The copper-voiced figure by the door took a step forward, into the thick fall of moonlight that lay fat and heavy across the kitchen. The knife in Reagan's abdomen twisted violently, almost enough to make her drop her spoon. Almost, but not quite. She clenched it tighter, brought it in front of her. Turning only very, very slightly, movements small enough that – she hoped – they wouldn't be obvious to the intruder, she lay the broad head of the utensil on the counter and slid her hand over the head, bringing the other down hard against the end. She palmed the now wickedly pointed handle, left the sad head on the counter, and turned back to face the intruder head on.

Angels did not look like that.

"Daddy," she whispered, breathless. There wasn't an evident reaction in his pale face; he looked at her with the same tear-streaked, broken expression. It thickened the lump in her throat. "Daddy, you shouldn't be here."

He lowered his eyes briefly; when they came back up, there were new tears.

She took a deep breath, tried to steady her resolve. "It's wrong. You shouldn't be here."

He sniffled, wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. "It's cold."

Her hold on the ex-spoon weakened considerably.

"I woke up, and it was dark, and there wasn't anyone, and . . ." He started crying again, and Reagan almost dropped her spoon before she remembered herself. ". . . and it was just so cold."

She fought with herself for a long moment, not helped at all by the soundtrack of his weeping. She moved to go to him, then forced herself to stop, coming back to her ready stance solidly by throwing all her weight against each foot as she brought it firmly to the linoleum.

"You can't be here," she managed, using every bit of strength she possessed to keep her voice even, a try, at least, at emotionless. "It's not right. You have to leave."

He looked at her, an expression on his face and in his eyes that she had trouble placing. She thought hurt, confusion, but could there be something else? It was there, lurking just below the surface, unnamed and frightening.

"I was all alone," he whispered, looking at her still with the same curious expression, "I was all alone, and—"

"You can't be here!" As she said it, her voice broke, strength gone. "You can't be here, because—"

"I had to dig." His voice was very low now, very even, mocking her. No longer copper water, but something else, something warmer than metal, darker. Leather, dark and well oiled. Something about it frightened her, more than his crying. "I had to dig, Reagan, I had to dig out of my own grave."

"—because you're dead," she finished, too late.

"Apparently, that's not true," he said softly, leather gone to kidskin suddenly.

"I saw you! I saw you, laid out, and Mom cried, and I saw . . . I watched! I watched while they buried you! I watched them bury you!"

She was sobbing by the time she'd finished, tears soaking her face and hair and her breaths coming in violent slams that tore her apart with the rip in her abdomen every time she inhaled.

"They made a mistake," he said, a bit tersely. Again, the bite and soap smoothness of leather.

"But Mom . . . Mom cried . . ."

"She thought she was losing me," he soothed. "She made a mistake, too."

"But—"

"Everyone makes mistakes, Reagan. The best of us. I was sick, and I blacked out, just like I did at school. Just for longer, and everybody was scared and not thinking clearly, and they made a mistake."

She didn't say anything. Didn't dare to. Inside her head, she chanted, _Please, God, please . . ._ From nowhere, Darla's words: _Oh, Reagan! Don't talk to God! God can't hear you!_

"I was sick," he continued, "but I'm better now. See?"

She didn't see. But, through the dim light, she could see that he didn't have any dirt on his hands.

"I—" She fumbled for something to say that wouldn't leave her naked and vulnerable. Her eyes flashed back down to his hands again. "Where have you been?"

Where did he go to clean his hands?

He narrowed his eyes a little at her question. "I told you."

She shook her head. "No, I—your hands."

He looked confused, but briefly. He recovered quickly, going back to the mask from before, the expression she couldn't place.

"I went to the Catholic church, the one right near the cemetery. Washed my hands, my face . . . you don't know how it feels, Reagan, six feet of mud and worms and . . ." Another expression crept over him, the face you make when there's something crawling over the back of your neck and you can't do anything about it. The face for bugs under your skin. 

"You don't know," he repeated, voice almost too soft. He was quiet for a moment with that horrible expression on his face. Then, suddenly, his face changed, cleared. No emotion, none. Then he wet his lips, and blinked, and his eyes were no longer vacant, his face no longer empty. He looked taut with the nameless emotion, but, even with the ambiguity of it, it wasn't as horrific as either of the two previous. "It's heavy, earth. It's heavier than anything . . . so it . . . it's hard. The hardest part . . . getting through the coffin . . . it's . . ." He swallowed deeply, looking far off, somewhere else, again. "The earth weighs it down, see . . . it . . . it seals it shut and you can't . . . you have to tear and break it open, because you can't . . . you can't push it up . . ."

Reagan's heart tugged hard, and the sick feeling returned. She weighed the pain in her heart against the ever-insistent one in her abdomen, and elected to ease the first. She went to him, dropping her impromptu stake to the floor with a clatter as she took him into her embrace.

"I'm so sorry . . . Daddy, I'm so, so sorry . . . I'm so sorry . . ."

Numbly, like he had to labor to perform an automatic action, he folded his arms around her, stroking her tousled hair with his roughed fingertips. She cried against him; he pressed a kiss to her hair and tightened his grip a little, thawing.

"Shh . . . it's okay, baby, it's okay . . ."

There was a soft noise behind her; buried against him, she didn't look up. Angel must have; his muscles went taut under and around her.

"Reagan." 

She raised her head, turned in his grasp, and then took a step out of his arms and toward her mother, suddenly standing in the doorway. Behind her, Angel gave her hand a gentle squeeze, reassuring her with a reminder of his presence. She squeezed back and held tight to his hand; he curled his fingers around her grasp, holding her, too.

"Reagan," Buffy repeated slowly, walking carefully into the room. She had something in her hand, but Reagan couldn't see it. The room was very dark, Buffy was in the shadows, and she held her arm back a little, partially hidden behind her body. "Walk towards me."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "Mom?"

"Walk towards me," she repeated, voice firm, face set with resolve. 

"Buffy," Angel muttered. Her father was behind her, so Reagan couldn't see his face, but his voice sounded a lot harder than it should have. It sounded like a command, or a warning, and it sent a flag of worry throughout her.

"You shouldn't be here, Angel," Buffy responded in his tone. The twist in Reagan's stomach pulled a little harder as her mother echoed her words of earlier. The elder woman switched her attention to her daughter, suddenly, looking at her and relaxing her tone but not her stance. "Reagan, come here."

She started toward her mother, unsure but worried by Buffy's voice and the pain still spidering through her loins. Before she could get very far, however, Angel's grip on her hand, gentle and reassuring a moment before, became an iron vice around her wrist. Before she knew what was happening, he'd yanked her against him, one arm stretched across her body, holding her in place, the other hand around her throat, a crushing grip.

"I wanted to do this the easy way," he said, voice soft, but tone so poisonous Reagan hardly recognized him as the speaker. "I really did. But," he continued, grinning and rippling his face abruptly, bringing forth yellow eyes, razor teeth, and a strangled cry caught in his daughter's throat, "this is fine, too."

There was a thin scream and a gleam of silver as Buffy brought her arm up, revealing the long shine of a sword clenched tightly in her hand. 

Reagan's mind raced, her heart pounding in her chest. What . . .? She didn't understand. Her father was dead, he'd died of cancer, things like this didn't . . .

"What's going on?" Reagan whispered hoarsely, her voice straining against the demon's hold on her throat. "What happened?"

Both her parents ignored her. Reagan searched her mother's face; she didn't look surprised that this had happened. Just furious the monster was in her presence. Buffy spoke to Angelus, her voice ugly, her pretty mouth tightened, her eyes narrowed.

"I killed you once; I can do it again."

Startled as he might have been by the arrival of Buffy's new backup, he recovered sufficiently to shoot back: "Sure you have it in ya, sweetheart? 'F I remember correctly, you had a bit of trouble the first time, and we'd only fucked once . . . we've been boning a long time, princess; might be a little difficult."

Reagan flinched, both from the vitriol her father spit out and the flicker of hurt on her mother's face during the brief second she let her guard down.

"I'll be fine," Buffy said after a beat, her voice resolute, her hands white-knuckling the hilt of her sword. "But thanks for your concern."

He laughed a little, colder and higher-pitched, Reagan thought, than her father's. Inhuman.

"Anytime, Buff."

Buffy took a deep breath and readjusted her grip on the sword.

"Let her go, Angel."

He kissed Reagan's cheek with a quick snap and an insolent grin, ignoring her squirming.

"Maybe we should discuss custody. She _is_ half mine."

"Her father is dead," Buffy said, her voice, by some miracle, very even.

"Then she can join him," he purred, tightening his grip around her throat. "The apple not falling far from my tree and all."

"She is _not_ your apple."

"That wasn't my cock between your lovely thighs?"

"I wouldn't touch you, not ever, and you know it."

"An immaculate conception, then? Well, she is Chosen, isn't she?"

Buffy's eyes flashed. "Don't." 

"Don't what?" he demanded, hissing and baring his fangs. "Don't do . . . this?"

Reagan was unable to contain the tearing whimper that escaped as she felt fangs brush her throat.

Buffy's mouth drew tight and her eyes flashed brighter than the moonlight on her sword.

"Leave her alone. This isn't about her. It's about me. Your fight is with me. It's always with me."

"But she's so pretty," he insisted, velvet-voiced. "All lovely and young and . . ." Slowly, he ran his tongue over her throat, the curve of her jaw. "Firm." 

Reagan started to cry abruptly, a loud, shaking weeping. Suddenly, it didn't matter how he was here, just that he was. The only importance lay in the vile, ugly thing that crawled through her veins when he touched her, when he spoke those horrible words. She couldn't control her sudden tears; they racked her, made her sob and tremble and gasp. This, her parents noticed; the fire in Buffy's eyes wavered, and Angel let loose with another one of his unearthly giggles.

"This is great," he breathed, his voice full of an obvious appreciation of his own mastery.

"Angel . . ." Buffy started, her voice an unmistakable warning.

He just grinned. "What, you a little jealous, babe? Don't worry, sweetheart, it's just nature. Gravity taking effect and all. Making you a little _loose_."

She lowered her eyes, ashamed. 

"Don't feel bad, though . . . everyone ages . . ." He giggled again. "All right, maybe not _everyone_, but . . . don't worry, Buff. Honestly. You look great. For a woman of your age."

She raised her eyes to him. "You can't hurt me like that."

The smile left his face.

"No? Can I hurt you like this?"

He ran his tongue over Reagan's throat again, then, achingly slowly, sank his fangs into her pale flesh.

Reagan gasped harshly and grabbed onto his arm so hard her nails drew blood. Buffy slammed her sword broad-blade against the countertop, a great clattering call. Angel came up from feeding and looked at her, crimson smeared across his lips, making him look paler by comparison. Pale face. Dark, laughing eyes.

"What do you want?" Her voice sounded small.

He smiled. "Right now, I kinda want to bleed her dry."

Buffy dropped her sword with a heavy clatter, brought both hands up to her own throat.

"You can have me."

He raised an eyebrow. Reagan was crying again, whispering 'no' over and over again, but he ignored her. "Why would I want you when I could have her? Why would I want you at all? Sounds like you're having some delusions of grandeur, sweetie, thinking I want to spend all this time with you—" 

Buffy was wearing one of her husband's old oxford shirts as pajamas; she quickly unbuttoned the first button she had done and pushed down the collar to make more tanned flesh visible: her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder.

"Because I'm your obsession," she said softly, taking a step backwards, away from him, and pulling herself up onto the counter. She remover her cross necklace, held it in one hand. "You can have me completely. Do anything you want to me. Drink me . . ." She caressed her throat. "Fuck me lifeless." She ran the cross over the inside of one naked thigh. "Kill me." She threw the necklace to the floor. "I'm yours."

"And you think I couldn't take all of that, if I wanted?" he asked. His voice was cocky, but his grasp on Reagan loosened and his eyes were on Buffy.

"Yeah, I do. We've fought before, and who won then?"

He didn't answer, eyes clouded with annoyance.

"Besides," she continued, spreading her legs a little. She didn't have anything on underneath but white cotton panties, so his view wasn't bad. "Wouldn't you rather me give myself to you? Isn't surrender more of a victory?" 

"I don't know," he murmured, all attention on her, "I kinda think raping and torturing you to death is a victory." 

"Angel," she whispered, bringing her voice down an octave, making her tone huskier, softer, "White flag, here." He was immediately distracted by her mention of white, but only briefly. His eyes flickered between her legs, then back up to her eyes, narrowed and staring him down with dead honesty. "Now, be honest. Wouldn't you rather I arch my neck for you, instead of struggling while you hold me down? Wouldn't you rather I beg for an orgasm, instead of fighting you off? Wouldn't you rather I cry when you cut into me, instead of not making a sound?"

He was quiet for a minute, considering. "You don't cry."

"When I do, isn't it because of you? And don't you think I'd cry if you tortured me, and I'd begged for the chains?"

He smiled. "Ah. Begging for an orgasm, begging for chains . . . lemme tell you a secret, lover. The begging part? It—"

He was cut off when Reagan took advantage of his distraction and kicked back hard, really nailing him between the legs. He groaned, fell to his knees. Reagan ran into the arms of her mother, who was already back on her feet with her sword in her hand.

He looked up at them from the floor, gasping with pain, his face the emotion Reagan had been trying to place, tenfold. Anger. Insane anger. She hadn't been able to read it before, because she hadn't been expecting it, but now it was clear as day. He looked up at them from his prone position on the ground, eyes, face absolutely awash in anger.

"Like mother, like daughter. Jesus Christ, what is it about Summers women and putting the damage on _that_ part of a man?"

"Just you," Buffy said sweetly, letting go of Reagan and walking to him. 

"Yeah," Reagan chimed in bitterly, although she had no recollection of the other occasion of which he spoke. She flinched as she forced out the words, holding one hand against her bleeding, throbbing neck. The wound hurt, and it hurt to speak, but it would hurt more for him to see her weak. "You're special."

Buffy stopped in front of him, her bare feet settling quietly and resolutely on the tile. Angelus stared at them for a moment, trying to figure out just exactly how this had happened, and then raised his head to look at her. In one smooth, silent movement, Buffy placed the tip of her sword against the hollow where his neck met his jaw. He froze.

"I'm going to make you feel everything you did to her," she said quietly, meeting his eyes.

He quirked his mouth into a crooked grin, an expression of amusement that fell short of being reflected in his eyes.

"You're a good guy, Buff," he murmured, his eyes flashing down once to gauge the movement of his throat against the blade. "Torture isn't really your thing."

Buffy's expression didn't change, and her voice was perfectly level as she responded. "I'll make an exception for you. You're special, remember?"

"You don't have it in you." But he didn't sound sure. His tone was questioning, and his eyes were studying her, trying to measure her spitfire, her resolve.

She smiled a little sadly, shook her head. Her tone was softer, less violent when she replied. "I didn't think so, either."

His expression changed. There was a flicker of a priceless treasure – surprise in his eyes, a sudden understanding that she would kill him horribly right here in her kitchen. And then his eyes darkened again, and he went back to being cold and calculating and taunting her. "What changed? Met me?" 

"No. I had kids."

He made a face. "Bullshit. You've never even hit our kids. Torture is a bit beyond—"

She pressed the blade closer into his flesh, silencing him. "They are _not_ your kids." He didn't respond – of course, he couldn't – so she continued. "And I didn't mean I punished them. I meant I'd protect them, and punish the people that hurt them, no matter what the cost." He was – obviously – quiet. "And you're at the top of my list. So, there's just one thing left for you to do." She pulled the blade back enough that he could speak without slitting his own throat.

His mouth was tight, his eyes full of hatred. He knew what she wanted from him, and that he had to supply it; as long as she controlled that sword, he was her bitch. He hated her for it, and made mental notes of things to do to her once she wasn't holding that damn blade.

"What's that?" he asked feebly, knowing that's what she wanted to hear. 

Buffy smiled a little in triumph; this sent a flood of anger through Angelus's veins, but he remained silent. He knew that she would have no problem sending him to dust as long as he was in this position. So he was silent as she – always keeping the sword tight against his pulse point – used her knee to nudge him to his back on the floor. She followed the movement down and straddled him at the waist, readjusting her hold on the sword to make sure it was flush against his throat.

Green eyes sparked with fury, she wet her lips and replied quietly, acidly, "Tell me when it hurts."

His eyes widened, and then narrowed, the humiliation of his being forced to bow to her sparking his ingenuity. Taking either end of the sword in his hands, he pushed hard up, at the same time kicking upwards with both feet, throwing her off and against the wall. He stood, bringing the sword into a usable position in his blood-slicked hand. He flinched as he rolled the silver around his palm, reddening the pale metal and dripping crimson to the floor. Angelus flinched, then opened his eyes and glared at her with a fire as real and red as the false stigmata running in rivers down the sword.

Angry that she'd let her emotion topple her off guard, Buffy stood quickly, faced him off. She eyed the spoon-stake two yards behind him while he brandished the sword, both he and his weapon dripping with electric red.

"You'll beg me to kill you," he growled, voice low and animal, not completely hiding his pleasure at being in control of the situation again.

"Back to begging," she remarked dully, still eyeing the weapon.

He laughed. "Possibly it's a bit of a vice of mine."

"You and your goddamn compulsions. Your obsessions. Your fetishes. You're so fucking anal."

"I may be anal, but – speaking of fetishes – at least I don't like to be spanked." Buffy reddened slightly. "And the next time you use 'fuck' and 'anal' in a sentence together, I'm gonna fuck you up the ass. How's that for a fetish, princess?"

The red abruptly left her face and flew to light her eyes with a mirror of his rage.

"I think you should try."

"I think you should just wait."

He smiled at her apparent anger and ran his eyes across the kitchen, flinched hard as he gripped the sword tighter. The shadow of a smile passed over Buffy's face as she realized that she'd hurt him, that he was trying to get away. He was worried.

"What?" she drawled. "Don't want to play now?"

He caught her half-smile and realized that she was on to him. He forced a grin. 

"Got a headache tonight, baby."

She shook her head and chanced a step forward.

"Too bad, Angel, cuz I'm in the mood. Let's play."

He readjusted his grip on the sword; it was hard to hold properly, so slick with blood. His left hand had been cut halfway to the bone; this one was still good, but he didn't like the thought of being thrown against two Slayers with an injured hand and a slippery weapon. He abandoned these thoughts immediately and summoned an appropriate bravado to counter Buffy with.

"We will, baby, we will," he purred.

She wasn't going to be fooled. She narrowed her eyes.

"Now." 

She let the word drop heavily, weighed it out with the slow reserve of counting money. He eyed the door again; there was no way he could make it, not with her all frisky and determined. He paused a beat, ran his eyes over her, trying to decide on the proper tactic to score more time. Suddenly, he found it; Buffy was looking at him with resolve and anger, but she was flushed in front of him, trembling in her bare feet and her underwear. Maybe he was evil, but he looked like her dead husband, and her body responded to him even if her mind was smart enough not to. Smiling slightly, he closed the gap between them, walking up to her baffled yet unmoving force until they were chest-to-chest, belly-to-belly. She looked up at him, confused; he nixed the smile, met her eyes, and brought up his left hand, the one not holding the sword. Careful to close it tight so that she couldn't see how badly it was hurt, he gently stroked her face with his knuckles, a purposefully soft touch. A smear of red washed across her cheek, following his path, but she couldn't see that. Her body shuddered with his touch, not distinguishing between his essence and its master's. She gasped at how intensely she was conquered by such a simple movement, briefly closed her mystified eyes in an attempt to reclaim control of herself.

"You want to dance, Buffy?" he asked softly. "Feel the ache for it?"

She didn't say anything, but she didn't pull away from him, either. She just stood there, close enough to smell the earth and the blood on him, eyes lowered, head slightly bent. She suddenly felt every one of her years, every battle aching in her bones. She wanted to fold against him, let him take care of her. Even if it meant the black face of death. Even if it meant a sobbing, bloody rape on the yellow tile floor. Even if it meant an eternity of her body empty of soul, nothing. No matter what it meant. And she almost did, almost let the black embrace her. Almost joined him in his empty shell. But just then, as her resolve wavered and she brought her hand up to Angelus's bent against her face, Reagan drew in a sharp, pained breath. Buffy's eyes immediately found her daughter: standing in the dark, face shadowed, her father's eyes . . . and red fingers, her father's work there, too.

"That's all you and I ever did," she said quietly, bringing her eyes back to the pale face looming above her.

"We can do more this time, baby," he soothed. "We can dance every night for eternity, and I'll give you the stars." 

He leaned in close, so close that she could feel the absolute cold of his face and his lips brushed her ear when he spoke: "You're right. You're my obsession. I want you. Come with me; I'll leave her. It'll be easier this way. It'll be right."

He pulled back, pressed a soft kiss against her lips and looked her dead in the eyes before continuing.

"You're no good at taking care of yourself, Buffy. You never have been. You've always needed me."

He kissed her again, harder, more insistent. If it were her husband, she thought briefly, his lips would have been swollen and hot with a kiss like that; his, of course, were cold and stone, still.

"Let me take care of you."

Her heart caught in her throat again. Defiantly and definitely, she swallowed. Hard.

"Angel . . ."

He traced his hand down the slope of her face again. "I'll take care of you." 

She took another step into him, so that their bodies touched and he formed a looming web above and around her. She brought one shaking hand up to his face, traced his brow, down the angle of his cheekbone, his cold lips, then down his throat, his chest, traveling his body until it wound down his arm and gently cuffed his wrist, his hand still taut and hard around the sword.

"I want you to take care of me," she whispered.

Angelus used the hand not holding the sword, the one not in Buffy's possession, to snake around her waist and draw her closer.

". . . I need you take care of me."

He kissed her with a touch so light she wondered if he was trying his hand at gentle. "I know. I will." 

Her hand traveled down his wrist, down the metal spikes of attentive bones in his hands, around the cool, sticky pale of the sword.

"Please . . ."

Very slowly, she turned her face away from him, stretched her bare neck. At the same time, her grip tightened around the hilt of his weapon. His semblance of breath was coming thick and harsh with lust and hunger, but he didn't miss her tiny gasp as he pressed a kiss to the sharp cut of her jaw.

"Be gentle?" she pleaded, slipping the first two fingers of her hand under his clasp on the weapon.

When he didn't respond, vamping slowly, she whispered, "Be gentle," as an instruction this time, and slipped the next two fingers around the sword.

He growled and bared his teeth. With a short cry, she grabbed onto the sword with all her might, twisted it from his possession, and got a good slice across his demon face before he had a clue as to what had happened.

"Bitch!"

He stumbled away from her, good hand flying to his face, coming back pooled with blood. He hadn't caught it, hadn't even imagined that she'd be playing him. No, he'd been too concerned with playing _her_. Damn it, that _bitch_.

Buffy moved into a fighting stance, making sure to keep his eyes on her, all his attention focused on the fight and not on their daughter, standing back against the counter and watching with wide eyes and still bleeding wound coursing small rivulets of blood from beneath her hand.

"I'm going to kill you for that."

Buffy watched him, amazed both at his ballsiness and at her success. She'd hurt him. He was bleeding like crazy, and his voice cracked high when he threatened her. Feeling elated with the sudden burst of adrenalin that came from kicking his ass a little, she taunted, "What were you going to kill me for before?"

He let a wounded cry escape his lips before he caught himself. He took his hand away from his face, let it fall; there was a wet noise behind him as a handful of his own blood hit the tile. Glaring, bleeding, and ugly, he took a few steps toward her, fortifying his resolve with each step.

"That was pretty much a general principal thing, Buff," he retorted, starting to feel more in control and determined to stay that way. "But it would have been quick. Now, it'll take hours. I'll bathe in your blood, and I swear that you'll watch your heart—" He glanced briefly at Reagan, but, to Buffy's immeasurable relief, it was only a second until his eyes were on her again. "—and all of theirs—stop beating."

"It'll be a party." She tightened her grasp on the sword, circled around him a little, driving him away from Reagan and toward the door. "But, you know, I could really just kill you now and save you all that trouble."

He narrowed his eyes and continued on his spiel, not wanting to be outdone. "You know that you can bleed a person for days before they die? The human heart pumps out gallons of blood a day, and if you cut right, you can have open wounds that never close, keep them alive for months . . . years. . . . How's that sound to you, sweetheart?" 

She sighed. "And I was hoping we could go to Cancun for vacation. But I guess we'll save money if we just sit around and slowly bleed to death. . . . I see your point."

"Something else that's neat about the human heart? It's notoriously difficult to burn. Slow work." He watched revulsion flicker across her face with glee. "You can cut open a person's breastbone, and burn out their heart with them watching." He paused, studying her face. "What is your face gonna look like, when I burn out yours?" 

"It'll be prettier than yours," she whispered. "After I'm done with it."

Raising the sword quickly, she sliced the blade across his face again with a gleam of silver and a sharp cry of pain. More blood splattered to the ground, and Angelus took another few steps back, away from the sword and the angry Slayer wielding it, back almost against the door.

"What's'a matter, Angel? Don't wanna dance anymore?"

The muscles in his face twitched, and he turned slightly toward her to face her off again. She caught glimpse of a dark wash of bright red and arterial blue mixing to grotesque rotting flesh purple against his pale skin, then a sickening flash of too white as she realized she'd gone through to the bone. His mouth twitched; he was shaking not only with anger, but also with pain.

"We'll dance, love . . . but not tonight."

She shook her head. "No. Let's finish this."

He laughed, a little choked, a little too high. 

"Not tonight, princess."

His eyes searched the room again.

"It's been fun, girls, and I'm sure we'll play again real soon."

One trembling arm jutted back, hit the door desperately. Backing further against the door, his eyes scared and wide like a deer's, watching his tormentor, he twisted the cool metal of the doorknob frantically until the catch released and the door swung opened from behind him.

He paused a moment, before leaving.

"I promise," he said softly, and then disappeared into the dark of night.

Buffy dropped the sword with a loud clang, then rushed to the door, slammed it closed and locked it behind him, and then ran to Reagan.

"Are you all right?" She tilted her daughter's head gently and examined the wound. "He didn't go too deep. It's already started to heal." She traced the curve of the girl's face with her cupped palm. "You're gonna be fine. Come on, let's get you cleaned up." Saying this, she glanced at her sunflower yellow tile floor. Her heart sank. Covered with blood. Another chore before the children woke up in the . . . in a few hours.

She led her daughter to the closest bathroom, sat her down on the closed toilet. She fished around in the cabinet under the sink for a while before coming up with cotton balls, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a first aid kit.

"Mom," Reagan whispered, eyeing her mother warily. 

Buffy looked up from washing her hands. "Yeah?"

She lowered her eyes. "I'm really sorry." Buffy sighed, dried her hands and turned off the faucet, and opened the hydrogen peroxide. "I mean . . . I was stupid and shortsighted and . . . it went against everything you've ever taught me and . . ." She flinched as her mother held a hydrogen peroxide-soaked cotton ball to her wound. "And I'm so, so sorry."

Buffy dabbed around the wound with a clean cotton ball. "Reagan . . ." She wet her lips, threw away the cotton ball, and applied an ointment from the first aid kit to Reagan's throat. "Don't be sorry. You . . . you thought he was someone else. I understand why you invited him in, and it's okay—" 

"I didn't invite him in," she protested softly.

Buffy stopped unrolling gauze and looked at her little girl. "What?" 

"I didn't invite him in."

"Reagan, you're not going to be in trouble—"

She shook her head, wincing at the pain from doing so. "Mom, I swear. I didn't invite him in."

Buffy was still a moment, first studying her little girl's face – Reagan was telling the truth, or at least believed she was – and then trying to work over this new information. After this brief respite, she sighed and went back to the gauze, trying to forget the pain all through her back, spidering up her neck and flowering into a world-class migraine.

"Maybe . . . maybe it's because he lived here, then. Or because he died here . . ." Her voice cracked and she fell silent, finding it very important to divert all her attention to cutting a square piece of gauze. She swallowed thickly and said in a husky voice, "We can ask Giles in the morning." She was quiet again.

Reagan waited a beat before speaking again. "Mom, I don't understand. I mean . . . he died from cancer."

Buffy nodded wordlessly.

"You . . . you watched him," Reagan insisted. Her mother flinched. 

"Yes," Buffy whispered. "I watched."

She looked like she was about to cry, so Reagan waited a moment before asking her next question. "Then . . . why did he come back as a vampire?"

Buffy made a pain noise in the back of her throat, looked away briefly.

"I don't _know_," she said too quickly, the muscles in her jaw working spastically as she tried not to cry. "I don't know, we'll . . . we'll just ask Giles in the morning."

She was quiet for a while, busy tending to Reagan's wounds.

"I . . . well, it's obviously that he has, isn't it?" She glanced at the bite marks on Reagan's neck. The girl nodded. "So he has. I don't know how. It's not important right now."

She was quiet for another moment, tending her daughter's wounds with shaking hands. A single tear escaped from under her dark lashes, but they both made a point not to mention it.

"We'll ask Giles in the morning," she said again, and Reagan decided to drop the subject. 

But after a moment, she ventured: "Mom?"

Buffy held the folded layers of gauze against the wound on Reagan's neck. "Hold this, please." Obediently, Reagan held the bandage while her mother cut long strips of surgical tape.

"Mom?" she asked again.

Buffy looked at her with red eyes, taking the bandage from her and starting to tape. "What?"

"Were you . . . were you really going to trade yourself for me?"

She stopped affixing tape and searched her daughter's face. "I figured I wouldn't have to. You're a smart girl; I knew if I distracted him, you'd figure something out."

They were quiet for a minute while Buffy went back to her taping. Three pieces of four on, Reagan screwed up her courage and once again: "Mom?" 

She didn't look up from applying the last piece. "What." 

"Would you have?"

"What?"

"Would you have . . . traded—"

She smoothed the bandage and met Reagan's eyes. "I know what you were asking."

"Then why—"

"I just wondered how you could ask me that." 

She flushed. "Oh. I'm sorry, I—"

Buffy looked very tired. "In a heartbeat."

She blanked. "What?" 

Buffy wasn't smiling. "I would have given him anything to save you. My money, my home, my blood, my body, my life, my soul . . ."

Reagan swallowed thickly. "But why?"

She wet her lips and shrugged, like it was obvious. "Because I love you. More than myself. More than . . . even more than I loved Angel. More than I've ever loved anything."

Her eyes welled with tears. "Why?"

"You're a part of me. A part of the man I loved. And, if that weren't enough, you're your own person, too. Sweet and kind and good . . . smart and talented and beautiful . . . loving and wonderful and full of life and potential."

"But . . . I fucked up tonight. I fucked up big time, and . . . and you still . . ."

She placed a hand on each of the girl's shoulders. "It doesn't matter. I love you – absolutely – no matter what."

Fat, clear tears rolled down her pale cheeks. "Mom . . ."

Buffy pulled her into an embrace, holding her tight.

"Mom . . . Mommy . . ."

"Shh . . . hush, baby, it's all right . . ."

"Everything's so fucked up. I'm so scared of . . . of everything. I don't know who to trust, or what's right, or . . ."

She laughed hollowly. "That's called growing up."

"Can I not, then, please?"

She kissed her softly. "You kind of have to. But don't worry. I'm gonna be here to help you. Take care of you." Reagan snuggled closer against her. "It'll be hard and scary, but you don't have to do it alone. You have your brother and your sisters and Chloe and Chris and all your aunts and uncles, and I . . . I'll be here. I mean, I guess I'm kind of a single mother now, and that'll be hard, too, but I'll always have time for you, I'll always . . ."

She trailed off, falling silent. Reagan sniffled. "Mom? You okay?"

"Yeah," she murmured, sounding distant. "It's just . . ."

"What?"

She sighed. "I'm a single mother raising Slayers."

"So?" 

"I've turned into my mother."

She laughed, an empty, desperate laugh, the same way she had when she'd heard the Codex prophecies that she was going to die. She laughed until she cried, thinking dumbly that neither made her feel any better, but that she just couldn't stop.

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
the Gryphons' Home**

Buffy tried to put Reagan to bed, but the girl refused to separate herself from her mother. Instead, she followed her around, her shadow, a silent dark-eyed specter. Buffy, on her hands and knees in the kitchen scrubbing blood off the floor, into crimson water and stained hands . . . she felt a presence weighing on her and

"_Is there a problem, ma'am?"_

jumped.

"Reagan, sweetie, why don't you go to bed?"

The look was enough. Buffy sighed and went back to work; Reagan continued skulking and watching her silently. 

"You knew him," she said heavily after a moment. 

"What?" Buffy asked absently, paying more attention to her chore than to her daughter.

"You knew him," the girl repeated, glaring down at her mother accusingly. "Not Daddy. But the vampire, you knew him."

Buffy sighed. "Yes. You're right, I did."

"He was a vampire before," Reagan continued, the accusation not leaving her voice.

"Correct," Buffy said tightly, not looking up at her child, just scrubbing the floor with her mouth drawn and her muscles tense.

"You married a _vampire_," she added, her voice cracking.

"No," Buffy sighed. "He was human when I married him."

"That's impossible."

"Apparently not," Buffy retorted, her patience fraying a bit at the edges.

"But how—" 

"There's a lot of magic in the world, Reagan. You know that."

Reagan huffed, raising her eyes briefly heavenward. "Fine. But he was a vampire when you met him?"

"Yes." 

"So you _fell in love_ with a vampire." The accusation crept back into her voice.

"Yes, Reagan, I fell in love with a vampire."

"That's . . . how could you do that? You're a Slayer."

"It's not as though I'd planned on it, Reagan." She raised her eyes to her scowling daughter. "And it was different. He had a soul—"

"Vampires don't have souls," she snapped.

Buffy's mouth pursed. "Watch your tone, first of all. Secondly . . . again, there's a lot of magic in the world. And no, vampires generally don't have souls; that's why I said he was _different_. About a hundred years before I met him, he pissed off some gypsies and they cursed him with a soul. A soul he had when I met him."

"I've never heard of anything like that ever happening."

"It was kind of an isolated incident, Reagan," Buffy sighed.

Reagan started to argue again, but then decided against it; it wouldn't get her anywhere. Instead, she said, "But he killed people. A lot of people."

"Reagan, I know I don't need to tell you that a vampire is not the person whose body it takes over. Your father never killed anyone; the demon that took him over did." 

Reagan was still bristled over the previous point, but her mother's tone in answering was dangerous, so she unsmoothly switched gears. "But he was still—he was dead . . ."

"And it was a little weird, having a boyfriend who didn't breathe. But you don't get to choose who you fall in love with, and I loved him a lot more than I cared about things like whether or not he had a pulse."

Reagan ruminated over this point for a long moment before deciding to accept it.

"Okay, I get that," she said softly. "But why would you lie to us—"

Buffy's brow rose. "Lie to you? About what?"

Reagan did a double take. "About what? Um, hello, huge thing about our dad being a vampire once upon a time?"

"We didn't lie to you. Yes, we withheld certain information from you, but it's not as though you ever asked us, 'Have either one of you ever been a vampire?' And what purpose could it have served, telling you that?" 

"Purpose? I don't know; I didn't think there needed to be a _purpose_ . . . but that's a huge thing to keep from us, Mom; you should have told us—"

"I disagree," Buffy said glibly. "It wasn't any of your business; you didn't need to know."

"It might have helped prepare me for tonight," Reagan said softly.

Buffy sighed. "I never . . . this is impossible. I never imagined that he'd come back—"

"Daddy?" 

"Angelus," she murmured. To Reagan's puzzled face, she elaborated, "Vampires are big on names. Angelus was the name he used when he was . . . bad."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "You said that when you fell in love with him, he had a soul."

"He did."

"Then how did you meet . . ." She stumbled over the word, uncomfortable with the shape of it in her mouth. The name he used when he was bad. Her father. The name he used when he was a vampire. ". . . Angelus? You knew him."

Buffy sighed. "When I was seventeen, something happened, and Angel lost his soul. He got it back, but for a few months, he . . . he was bad."

"How did he lose his soul?"

Buffy closed her eyes under duress. "The gypsies, their curse . . . to keep him punished, they made it so that if he ever experienced a moment of true happiness, he'd lose his soul again."

"That's insane."

"Gypsies are bigger on vengeance than on logic, Reagan."

"So . . . what made him truly happy?"

Buffy laughed bitterly. "I did."

Reagan's face softened. Her mother looked so small, so sad.

"I see." A beat. "But . . . but he got his soul back, right? How'd that happen?"

"Willow re-cursed him."

"With the gypsy curse?"

"Right." 

"Can we do that again? We could . . . we could have Daddy back."

Buffy was a long, long time in answering, turning her face from her daughter. Would that work? Was that possible? And if it was . . . ? First she thought about having Angel back, and her heart swelled so far and so fast that she couldn't breathe for a moment. And then she thought about going back to having him as a vampire, going back to not being able to touch him, and she had to close her eyes tight to dam in the tears before they added to the mess on the floor. She couldn't. It would be worse than hell for both of them.

"Reagan, I don't know," she said finally, thinly. She didn't know how she was able to speak, but the words made it out sounding almost normal. "I don't know anything about the situation, about how he's back, or . . . I don't know. We'll get everybody together in the morning, and we'll . . . we'll figure out what to do."

Reagan, crushed again, was quiet for a long time, letting the weight of the situation fall upon her. She had a million questions to ask, a million things she needed to know about her father's life as a demon, about her mother's life as the love of one. But they all got caught in her throat, too terrible and too real to utter.

"I thought he was an angel," she said heavily after a long moment, because it was the only thing able to rise beyond her throat.

Buffy raised her eyes to the girl. "What?"

Reagan fell into a crouch on the wet tile beside her mother. Her eyes were on the floor, on the blood still on the floor. Her hair fell around her face and her shoulders like wings.

"When I first came downstairs, I thought he was an angel."

Buffy opened her mouth to say something. She had a sudden irrational hatred toward the dogma that produced angels and demons with the same face, cursed her dead husband silently for every single time he'd taken Reagan to mass. She took a deep breath and swallowed the sick-tasting revulsion and was suddenly fine again.

"Well, honey—"

A tear splashed into the red tide on the floor. Buffy didn't say anything. 

"But when I saw his face," Reagan was saying, her voice horrible, absolutely a song of agony, "I knew that was stupid. Angels do not look like that. They do not have _eyes_ like _that_."

Buffy reached out to touch her; the girl shivered away, but not from the blood on her hands. She raised her dark, spooked eyes to her mother.

"I couldn't kill him." 

Buffy's mouth slackened a bit; shocked and numb, she dropped her rag to the floor. It made a small splash, speckled little droplets of diluted blood onto her bare thighs.

"Why would you have to kill him?"

Reagan's face was emotionless as she answered. "I knew as soon as . . . when I saw him, I knew. I knew what he was, and I should have killed him. I even found a weapon. But I couldn't do it."

Buffy sighed. "I don't know that I would spend too much time beating yourself up about that, Reagan."

She looked at her mother incredulously. "Why not? Killing's my job. It's what I do best, and tonight I couldn't even do it to save my life." She snorted at the inadvertent turn of her cliché. "Or yours. Or Eve's, or Lexi's, or . . . anybody's life."

"Thankfully, it didn't come to that," Buffy said dully, returning to her chore. 

"But it might."

"Oh, it very well might, my darling. But I'll be the girl with the sword."

"What if you're not there?"

Buffy's mouth tightened. "I will be." She paused. "And even if I'm not, you are stronger than you realize. If it's up to you – which it won't be – I have no doubt that you'll come through."

"But I failed tonight," Reagan muttered, her voice colored with self-disgust. 

Buffy's mouth drew up into a smirk. "Once. You missed one shot _once_."

"But I—"

Buffy shot her a harsh look. "Have a little faith in yourself. I raised you better than that."

Reagan didn't say anything.

"Didn't I?" Buffy prodded.

Reagan opened her mouth uselessly but didn't respond.

"Well, did I raise some coward who falls to the earth after one blow, or did I raise a warrior?"

Reagan lowered her eyes.

Buffy set her gaze firmly on her daughter. "Well? Which is it?"

"A warrior, ma'am," she said weakly.

Buffy smiled a little, despite herself. "That doesn't sound like a warrior to me. Did you or did you not come face to face with the most horrible monster you could imagine tonight, and come out smiling?"

The corner of Reagan's mouth twitched. "Not smiling."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. 

"Maybe not," she said softly. "But strong."

Reagan smiled a quiet little smile up at her. "They make Summers women tough."

Buffy pressed a kiss to her daughter's cheek. "They most certainly do. You'd do well to remember that, girl." 

"Yes, ma'am," she said solemnly, smiling honestly for the first time in . . . well, since the night before, but it felt like forever. "I will."

After the floor was scrubbed – and her hands scrubbed after that – Buffy was finally able to wrangle her daughter back to bed. Reagan complained all the way up the stairs but fell asleep just moments after her head touched the pillow; Buffy covered her up and kissed her and Sara, still asleep in her sister's bed, goodnight, before racing through the house and checking manically to make sure the rest of her children were all right. They were all just as she'd left them, sleeping peacefully and undisturbed. On the way back up the stairs after checking on Eve, she said a small prayer of thanks, but then remembered that she was mad at God and brooded on whether she should take it back.

Mentally and physically exhausted, by the time she reached her bed her legs almost gave from beneath her, and she lay heavy and fatigued for a long time without moving, staring up at the ceiling, replaying the events of the night. 

"Please give me the strength to deal with this," she said into the waiting air before she remembered that she was mad at God. 

This was . . . this was impossible. Angel had died of cancer, and then suddenly risen as her very worst nightmare. As if Christmas wasn't stressful enough every year.

Buffy winced at her horrible logic – or lack thereof – and at her worse automatic sarcasm. Truth was, she had paused a full second on the way down the stairs to meet Angelus; she'd heard his voice and had been more frightened than she had been in years. Not the kind of frightened you are at horror movies, or of death, but the shaking inherent fear you have when your baby is tottering at the top of the stairs, the fear you have _while_ you're dying. It had taken every ounce of strength she'd possessed to walk into that kitchen, and she was still so _terrified_ . . . after a moment, she realized she couldn't breathe and let out the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. She was shaking, an inch from crying and hysterics. 

"Oh, God . . . oh, God . . ."

She clenched her jaw, fixed her muscles. She was not going to break down. She could deal with this, she _had_ to.

Thoughtlessly, she slid her eyes over to Angel's side of the bed. His stupid fucking reading glasses were still on the table, useless and unbroken—flawless. She wanted to break them into a hundred pieces. How dare they be here when she was alone, when he was nowhere, when he was . . . worse than dead? He was supposed to take care of her. He was supposed to be there to help when the next impossible evil rose from its grave and stalked into her kitchen.

"Oh, God," she moaned. "Oh, _Angel_ . . ."

She forced herself miserably to her side, curled into a ball, shaking hands clawing uselessly at her pajamas, at the sheets.

It didn't take her long to cry herself to sleep.

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
the Gryphons' Home**

Buffy woke after only a few hours of sleep, her body sore and heavy, her face and lungs clean with the leaden hollowness of crying your heart out. The sun was rising outside; the whispers of it were beginning to filter through the curtains and into the room.

She felt sick, an anxious nausea twisting at her stomach. She felt sick, and heavy, but really not like a person at all, not real; she felt somehow ethereal and ungrounded by the wear crying had wrung her body through.

She checked on her children – all fine and sound asleep – and then showered and dressed. She checked the kitchen floor for any signs of the fight last night that she might have missed, and then she put on coffee and called Giles to tell him that her husband had risen from the dead and begun terrorizing them as his evil alter ego.

She felt bad waking him to that kind of news, particularly with his response of confounded sputtering giving away his feelings on the matter, but she was out of her league and too tired to work up some more league, and he was her number one fallback.

Okay, that was a lie. Angel was her number one fallback, but he was dead and useless to her now, so Giles got bumped up the list.

He promised to be over shortly. She started making breakfast.

Reagan woke up earlier than she would have liked. She hurt all over: the bite was like a tetanus shot, hurting and swelling far beyond the site of intrusion. Too caught up in herself, it took her a long time to remember Sara; she was almost out the door when her eye caught hold of her sister. Her stomach fell.

Sara didn't know anything. Sara had slept through the world changing, and didn't know that their father was a monster and that he'd been in their _house_, didn't know that Reagan had been bitten by a vampire for the first time ever in three years of slaying, didn't know about any of the horrible things she'd heard their parents say, the horrible things she'd seen on their faces.

Reagan went and sat back on the bed beside Sara's sleeping form. Reagan felt heavy; she couldn't move. As horrible as she felt, it was going to be so much worse for her siblings; it would be like waking up on Christmas morning to find death instead of presents, all over again.

She wondered if she should wake her twin, if she should warn her, explain what had happened. But then she looked at Sara's face and the words arrested in her throat; she looked so peaceful, so happy not knowing. Reagan decided to let her bask in that peace and happiness for as long as she could.

Instead of waking her, Reagan fixed Sara's covers over her, and then went downstairs to the working shower. Her mother was cooking in the kitchen, the same kitchen from last night where her father had been an angel and then a devil. Reagan was very much aware of her wound again, felt it throbbing beneath the gauze and tape like it was honing in on the beacon of its birthplace. 

Reagan locked the bathroom door and stripped slowly before the mirror, taking the bandage off last, with exaggerated care.

She wasn't healed yet, which she wasn't used to; the mark was still there, red and angry. She ran her fingers over it gingerly. The pain flared, her whole body flared, and she withdrew her hand. The violent splotch of crimson splashed across her throat hadn't faded away in the night; it had barely lessened, and in the mirror it mocked her with its vibrancy. Beside it, the rest of her looked monochrome; her hair and eyes and nipples dark beyond color, her skin the pale unearthly gray of fifties television beauties. Beside its irritated effervescence she looked frail, like she could break away into nothing. She ran her hands over her body, reaffirming its solidity; she could feel the bones of her hips, the gentle rounded ridges of her ribs beneath her fingers, shadows just beneath the surface. She didn't know how she could still be here; Angelus should have been able to snap her in half like a twig, to crush her to powder between his hands. She usually thought of her body as beautiful: she was slender, with little fat and muscle defined only enough that it was smooth and healthy. She'd never worked her muscles to bursting; her parents had taught her that overwork was bad for her body, and besides, it would make her look unfeminine, and as much as she hated to admit it, she liked being pretty.

She studied her reflection in the mirror now with revulsion rising up in her throat. Vanity could have gotten her killed last night. If she had pushed harder, if she had thought only about being at her physical peak instead of worrying about what Chris thought about how her body looked, or about what ballet companies thought, or about what fashion magazines thought, she could be better now. She wouldn't be so breakable. Angelus wouldn't have stood a chance.

She brought her eyes back to where the red overshadowed her out of Technicolor. She didn't really believe any of that. She _was_ at her physical peak: she worked hard, and she was at the top of her game.

That hadn't been the problem. Any frailty was on the inside.

There was a knock on the bathroom door and she started, her reflection wavering.

"Reagan? Sweetie, is that you?"

It was her mother. Reagan let out her held breath, realizing shamefully that she'd been expecting Angelus.

"Yes, Mom," she murmured. She cleared her throat, steeled her voice. "I was just—I'm going to take a shower."

"Fine," Buffy said, her voice echoing strangely through the door. "There's breakfast, when you're done."

It took her a long time to answer.

"Okay," she said finally, but Buffy was gone; she'd heard her move away almost a whole minute ago.

She always acted too late.

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017   
the Gryphons' Kitchen**

Giles arrived while Reagan was still in the shower. He knocked on the back door – _Where Angelus came in last night,_ Buffy thought to herself before she could help it – and she took a brief break from the waffle iron to let him in; she greeted him with a cup of coffee, and he greeted her with a hug that she hadn't realized she needed until his arms were around her.

"Thank you," she whispered, although she wasn't really sure if she was grateful for the hug or his presence or his being Giles.

He smiled and patted her cheek and then took a seat, sipping his coffee and letting her get back to her waffles, which were starting to smoke.

"How are you?" he asked gently once she'd averted the crisis and silenced the smoke detector.

She served him some of the least singed waffles and a bottle of maple syrup, and shrugged.

"I don't know. Bad?"

He regarded her with concern. She stayed hovering by the table, aware that the waffle iron needed tending but unable to force herself out of inertia.

She sighed. "I don't . . . I don't even know what the worst of it is. I just . . . it doesn't feel real, you know? It feels like the worst nightmare I've ever had, only—only I'm really and honestly terrified, because I know that it's real."

The smoke detector went off again after the neglected waffles started billowing smoke, and she stopped explaining herself to solve the problem before it woke up and subsequently burned down the entire household. The beeping stopped and the blackened waffles thrown away – this batch too Cajun-style for even Buffy's lax waffle code – she put some more batter in the iron, topped off Giles's coffee, and continued her story.

"He bit Reagan."

Giles started, choking a bit on his coffee. "What? Is she all right?"

"She's fine. I mean, she's not fine. But she's . . . she'll heal."

"And she didn't invite him in," she added.

"Who did?"

Buffy shrugged. "Nobody. Nobody that lives here, anyway."

Giles hid his frustrated expression by taking another sip of his coffee. 

"And—" She forced a laugh. "—And I hate to bring this up, because it makes things so difficult, but Angel died of cancer and not vampire attack."

"We must have missed something," Giles said slowly. "You can't die from natural causes and then rise as a vampire; there's no record—"

"I know."

"Maybe he wasn't . . . maybe he wasn't really dead when the paramedics took him away. Maybe he just fainted, like he did at school, and then a vampire fed on him at the morgue while he was incapacitated—"

Buffy leveled a long, hard look at him and he trailed off. "Nice try. But no. Believe me, Giles, I know dead. Me and dead are very close. And Angel died. I watched him die, and he was _dead_ when the paramedics took him away." 

"There has to be a logical explanation for this," the Watcher replied weakly.

"I'm sure there is," Buffy replied flippantly, going over to tend to the waffle iron before she set off the fire alarm again. "But I don't have a clue what it is."

"Nor I. We'll research . . ." He trailed off, his eyes catching on something. Buffy, her back turned, didn't notice.

Reagan was standing in the doorway, her hair wet from her shower, her throat freshly bandaged.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Giles said kindly, utilizing Grandfather Voice.

All the pain from the bite and a morning of self-contemplation disappeared immediately, and a smile bloomed across her face. Giles was the very best thing that could have happened to her this morning. Uncharacteristically, she ran to him and collapsed into his arms for a hug.

A little surprised but not displeased, Giles folded his arms around her, petted her back and her damp hair. After a moment, she drew away from him; looking concerned, he brought his hand to the thick bandaging on her neck.

"I got bitten," she explained quietly.

"I heard," he replied gently. "Is it causing you much pain?"

Buffy, by this time, had turned from her waffles and was watching the proceedings with none-too-veiled interest.

"No, sir. I mean, it hurts more than I'd thought it would, but really, it's all right."

"Let me have a look," he instructed quietly, not a question. 

Obediently, she slid off his lap and pulled a chair close to his, sitting still while he carefully untaped one side of the bandage and examined the wound.

"How is it?" Buffy asked from the stove, unaware that her hands were white-knuckled around her spatula. 

"It looks fine; it doesn't appear as though the bite were too deep." He reaffixed the tape and patted Reagan's hand in a reassuring kind of way. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No, sir."

Buffy sat a plate of waffles in front of her daughter, and Reagan turned to them, scooting her chair to the table. Buffy leaned against the pale wood beside her daughter and addressed Giles.

"It wasn't deep. He was just doing it to scare her." Her face darkened. "Us."

Reagan brought her attentions from her breakfast to her Watcher.

"Giles, I don't understand. How did he come back?"

He was a moment in answering. "I don't know. But we'll find out. I promise." When she didn't look entirely convinced, he patted her hand again and added, "Don't worry."

A voice came from the doorway. "About what?"

The three people at the table turned to look at Sara, standing in the doorway; or at least the three of them did until Buffy's neglect set off the fire alarm again and she had to run off and pay attention to that. About that same time, Reagan lowered her eyes to her waffles and concentrated on being invisible.

"Don't worry about what?" Sara repeated, coming into the kitchen. "And why is Giles here?" 

"Good morning," he said into the absence of a tactful way of filling her in.

She smiled at him, but the suspicious look didn't completely leave her face.

"Good morning, sir." She waited a full beat before adding, "What's going on? What aren't we worrying about?"

"Waffles?" Buffy interjected cheerfully, bringing her daughter a plate of slightly charred breakfast.

Sara accepted them dubiously, but allowed her mother to shepherd her into a chair at the table. She was almost willing to write the happenings of the morning thus far off as just her family being weird until she looked up for the syrup and saw the bandage on Reagan's neck.

Her eyes widened. "Reagan! What happened?"

Involved in her own breakfast, Reagan's mind was far from the topic her sister was concerned with. "Huh?" 

Sara brandished her fork at the offending item. "To your neck. What happened?"

Reagan lowered her eyes and brought up a hand self-consciously to cover the flash of white.

"Oh. I, um, I got bitten," she muttered.

"By _what_?" 

"A vampire."

Sara was momentarily at a loss for words. They came back stiltedly. "What? You—what? You went on patrol last night? Are you all right?"

Reagan hesitated for a moment before looking back helplessly at her mother.

"Mom? Help?"

Sighing – and remembering this time to take the waffles out of the iron before starting a conversation – Buffy came to the table and sat down beside her daughter.

"Sara, honey, there's something we've got to tell you."

Sara stared at her family in silence for a long time after they'd finished speaking.

"A vampire," she said finally.

Buffy and Giles nodded encouragingly. Reagan sighed and worked on her waffles.

"You guys know that's insane, right?" she added. "And impossible. To become a vampire, there's lots of fluid exchange, all sorts of sucking and—"

"We know," Buffy said.

"—and you do actually have to be alive for this to happen; a vamp can't turn you after you've died from cancer—"

"We know," Buffy said.

"—and Dad was _dead_. He died of cancer. We buried him."

"We know," Buffy said.

"Tell her the best part," Reagan said with mock cheerfulness. "Tell her the part about how he was a vampire before."

Buffy shot Reagan a very ugly look. Meanwhile, Sara's jaw bobbed up and down a bit before she remembered herself.

"_Who_ was a _what_ _when_?" she managed.

Buffy sighed. "Angel. Was a vampire. Before you were born."

"How, exactly, does that work?"

Buffy sighed again. "It's gonna be a really long morning, isn't it?" 

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
the Gryphons' Home**

Unfortunately, the morning was only beginning, and filling Sara in on twenty years of history proved to be one of the easier challenges that Buffy would face. The harder things came soon after: she decided to call in the cavalry. First, she had to wake up half of the cavalry, and then she had to explain to all members the importance of her call.

And then she had to convince them that the events of last night were real.

She collected the adults in the kitchen and banished all the children to other regions of the house. She wasn't prepared to tell her children – or anyone who wasn't in the need part of the need-to-know basis, anyway – that Angel was back in a big, bad way. But it was important to her that she protect her babies from this new threat; if he were true to par, her children would be high on Angelus's list of targets.

She filled her friends in on the bare bones of the details, and, encountering a roomful of doubtful expressions, ended with, "I don't know how it happened, or why. That isn't important right now. What's important is that I prepare my children for this."

She was met with some resistance.

Xander was looking haggard; his cheeks were taut and there were dark circles under his eyes. "Things like this don't just happen, Buffy." 

Wesley nodded slowly. "He's right, I'm afraid. There's never been record of a human dying of natural causes and then rising as a vampire, it—"

She made a tight, frustrated noise. "I know that!" She looked around the circle of her so-called friends, all of them standing there around her, regarding her with pity. Like she was crazy. She wasn't fucking crazy. "What? Do you think I made this up?"

They didn't say anything, just stood there being silent and judging. She shook her head. "No. No. I did _not_ make this up! Reagan, Reagan saw him too, he bit her! He—"

They exchanged glances amongst themselves. Cordelia tried to look cheery. 

"Maybe it was another vampire—"

Buffy frowned. "It was _not_ another vampire! It was Angel. I saw him, Reagan saw him, we—"

Willow raised her hands up in a kindergarten teacher's attempt to quiet her unruly crew.

"Well, Buffy, you've been under a lot of stress lately . . . and Reagan too . . . and isn't it possible that maybe you guys got attacked by another vampire and . . . you know, cuz you were so upset that Angel died, kind of just imagined that it was him?"

Buffy glared at her. "Don't Psych 101 me. I am not crazy. I am not hallucinating. I am not displacing. Angel is back in a big, bad, ugly kind of way and if you guys don't stop inquisitioning me, we'll never find out how or why and he'll just go around killing people—" 

Giles interjected. "All right. It's all right. Let's just be rational about this." He smiled at Buffy, who was still big on the glaring despite his being rational. "Buffy isn't crazy. She's aggrieved, it's true, but she is of sound mind."

Wesley picked up for him. "So she must have seen something that appeared to be Angelus—"

Buffy shook her head. "No. No appearing to be. He _was_. He didn't just look the part; he said things . . . things that aren't on the Monsters of Sunnydale website. He was the real deal."

Wesley perked at this. "He said things? What did he say?"

She was suddenly having a difficult time remembering. "I—he . . . he talked about the first time I met Angelus, and the time we fought at the movie theater after killing the Judge, he—" She remembered his crack about fetishes and blushed a little. "—And other stuff. He said some other stuff."

The Watcher looked disappointed. "He didn't give any indication of how he could have risen?"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "This isn't a Bond movie! He didn't wait to attack us to give us a fully detailed description of what his game plan was. He kind of just made with the creepy."

Wesley was looking unimpressed, but then she remembered something.

"We didn't invite him in!" she declared, and a little interest came into the Watcher's eyes.

"No?"

"No. So he's mysteriously a vampire and he also doesn't have to be invited in." She frowned. "Like he didn't have enough advantages with Angel's face." Her throat caught suddenly and she stopped talking.

Willow came and put an arm around her, hugged her a little. Buffy smiled gratefully at her.

"Maybe he was a ghost," Cordelia commented helpfully.

"A ghost," Buffy repeated dully. 

"Well, sure," Cordelia said. "I mean, he looks like Angel – who is dead from non-vampire causes – and he doesn't have to be invited in, he just appears in your kitchen—"

"And bit Reagan," Buffy reminded her, voice tight. "And kissed me. And—"

"He kissed you?" Xander asked without any try at hiding the annoyance in his voice. "You kissed some vampire-ghost-thing that just appeared in your kitchen?"

"_He_ kissed _me_," Buffy said weakly. "And that's not the point."

"I think it's very pointy—"

"The point," Buffy continued, raising her voice. "Is that he was very much, you know, solid."

"Which ghosts kind of tend to not be," Willow added.

Giles started to interrupt with a "Well, sometimes—" but Buffy preempted him. "And anyway, why would Angel's ghost come back as Angelus and try to kill me and Reagan? Wouldn't it come back as Angel and . . . I don't know—" 

"Kiss you?" Xander suggested bitterly.

Buffy threw him a glare but didn't respond.

"You are right on that point," Giles said. "It isn't logical that Angel's ghost would come back as Angelus. Strictly speaking, a ghost is a _soul_ trapped between realms, and vampires don't have souls at all; a vampire couldn't be a ghost." He made an annoyed British face. "Or a ghost couldn't be a vampire, or . . ."

"The grammar's kind of not fun on this one," Willow said, trying to ease his pain.

"In any event, I think it's safe to assume that it wasn't a ghost."

"Okay . . ." Xander tried, being helpful and personable again. "Maybe it was a—" 

"Vision," said Cordelia weakly.

"No, that doesn't make any sense, Cor, they touched it—"

"No, you ponce, she's _having_ a Vision," Giles corrected him dryly as Buffy caught Cordelia on her descent to the newly scrubbed floor.

Cordelia's face screwed up in pain; her perfectly manicured hands clawed at her head, trying to calm the currents of imagery and agony rushing through it. Buffy carefully knelt with the Seer, laying her out on the floor; Wesley and Giles fell to their knees beside her, asking her what she'd seen.

When the Vision had dissipated to the point that she could focus on anything else, she sat up – with Buffy's help – and began to explain the pictures the Powers had sent her.

"Michael," she said weakly. Buffy's grasp tightened around her wrist, but Cordelia didn't even notice, the pain still too powerful in her head, her spine. "He's—he's hurt. It's . . . it's dark, he's in the cemetery, he's . . . he's bleeding, his arm is bleeding. There's a woman behind him, but I can't—I can't see her, really, just out of the corner of my eye . . ." She shook her head. "It doesn't—it's not happening right now, it's—"

"Is it in the future?" Wesley coaxed.

She shook her head. "No. No. It's—it feels like something that's already happened." 

Xander knelt by her side proffering a glass of water and some Advil; she took them gratefully.

Buffy was stone still beside her. "It's something that's already happened?"

Cordelia nodded painfully. "I think so. I'm almost positive."

Buffy rose slowly to her feet.

"Excuse me," she said softly, and shouldered past the crowd gathered around Cordelia and out of the room.

Exchanging a worried glance with Giles, Willow followed her friend.

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
Michael Gryphon's Bedroom**

_The little girl was young, littler than him but older than Lexi. She had bright blonde hair and rosy cheeks, large hazel eyes that opened like flowers when the noise at her window woke her._

She slipped out of her covers and sat up on her knees on her mattress; the window was right by her bed, but she was so little that she couldn't really see out of it unless she got tall.

There was a man outside her window, pale skin and dark eyes. He was knocking softly with his knuckles, but he stopped when he saw her.

Stopped and smiled.

"Hi," he whispered. He had a pretty low voice, like Daddy when he was telling bedtime stories.

She held up a hand in a little motionless wave. "Hi."

"What's your name?"

"Katie." 

He smiled. "Is that short for Katherine?"

She nodded, and his smile got bigger.

"I had a sister named Katherine." He looked at her earnestly. "I saw you playing today, Katie. You were the prettiest little girl at the playground. You and your sisters are about the prettiest little girls I've ever seen." 

She smiled and looked back briefly over the sleeping figures of her sisters in the room behind her. He was nice.

"—Katie, sweetheart, it's very cold outside; do you think I could come in?" 

She thought a moment, unsure.

"I've got a surprise for you," he offered. "Please, sweetheart, I got hurt tonight and I really need a sweet little girl to invite me in so I can feel better."

"Don't," Michael begged, curled up pitifully in the corner of the room, trembling in fear.

Katie ignored him completely and grinned toothily at Angelus, showing off two missing teeth that the Tooth Fairy had collected over the last few weeks, and stood up to push open the window and let the vampire in.

Michael began sobbing. He tried to get up and stop her from opening the window, but he couldn't. He was too afraid; the monster would get him.

"Please, please don't!" he screamed, but before the little girl could hear him, he was ripped from the world.

Katie's face disappeared and became his mother's, hovering above him and looking drawn and worried. She was shaking him; he tore violently from her touch.

"What are you doing?"

She'd turned on the lamp by his bedside; the sparse illumination lit her face in a scary, campfire way and made her look old and tired.

"Michael," she said quietly. Her voice was low, but there was something dangerous to it; she sounded kind of like she did when she was about to levy a punishment but was trying to not to be mad about the offense. But then that disappeared, and her face was flooded with concern all of a sudden, catching, perhaps, on the shadows of tears marring his face. "Were you having a bad dream?"

He nodded numbly. "Yes."

"You've been having them a lot lately?"

He nodded again.

"What about?"

"I don't remember," he lied.

Buffy took in a deep breath and held it. He was lying to her. Blatantly. This was not something she was unused to; Angel lied about his nightmares all the time, the only thing besides Drusilla, perhaps, that he'd ever lied to her about. But it didn't exactly bode well for the situation.

"Is there something you need to tell me?" she asked, the disciplinary tone sneaking back into her voice. 

He squirmed and shook his head too fast. "No, ma'am." 

She bit her lip, her eyes going large, pleading with him. "Michael, please. You won't be in trouble, I promise. I just need to know."

He hesitated, wanting to trust her, wanting to confess to her. But then he remembered the angry flash of Darla's eyes when she told him to be quiet about her, and shook his head. 

"No, Mommy. There's nothing." He looked desperately at her clearly unbelieving face. "May I go back to sleep now, please? I don't feel well."

Buffy was quiet for a long time, waging an internal battle against herself. He was her little boy; he wouldn't do anything bad. He wouldn't. But he was lying to her, right through his teeth, he—Maybe he was just sick. Maybe he really was just sick, and Cordelia's Vision was insane, maybe . . . 

Buffy took a deep breath and said quietly, "Michael, I need to see your arms, please."

Fear knotted hard in his stomach and he began crying, folded his arms around himself.

"No, I'm fine, no—"

Buffy's heart wrenched, anguished both that he was hurt and that she was very clearly right.

"Baby, please," she begged. "You're not in trouble, I promise, sweetheart, I just need to know what happened."

He sobbed, shaking. Hating herself, she gently pried his arms away from his body and straightened them out. Stomach turning slightly, she pushed up the sleeves of his rocket ship jammies and studied the undersides of his forearms.

Both were crisscrossed with series of shallow cuts, shining dark against his tan skin. A sour taste rose in Buffy's mouth, and she brought her son to her breast, hugged him desperately, petting his hair.

"Sweetheart, it's okay," she soothed, her heart beating violently in her chest. "Baby, it's all right. Just tell me what happened. Please, just tell me what happened."

Buffy could feel Willow's presence before she saw her there. Leaving Michael's room and closing the door quietly behind her, she sensed the witch and then leaned on the wall beside her.

"I rocked him back to sleep," she said hollowly. "He's sleeping." 

Willow let the weight of her touch fall gently upon Buffy's arm. The Slayer jerked quietly away from her.

"He says that a lady came to see him. He says that he's seen her several times; when Angel got sick, she told Michael that his daddy had been a vampire, and that he needed to be punished. That he needed to die." 

Willow's heart skipped a beat, but she let her friend talk herself into catharsis.

"And then, after Angel died, she came back and told him that she needed a favor." Buffy was silent for a long time, but Willow didn't interject. Finally, the Slayer continued. "He says that she had him go to Angel's grave—she woke him, in the middle of the night, and had him go out there and stand over Angel's grave and cut himself. She had him bleed over Angel's grave." Her heart was tight in her throat and she was a breath away from losing control. "He has cuts all over his arms; he's been sleeping all the time, I thought he was getting the flu—" 

She motioned desperately, her face crumbling. Willow took her friend into her arms, held her tight until her breathing calmed. 

Finally, Buffy pulled away, looking more composed but still plainly suffering.

"He called the woman 'Darla,'" she said softly.

"Like—like Angel's sire?" Willow asked after a long moment of rifling through her mental Rolodex.

Buffy nodded. "Yeah. I asked him for a description, and she matches." 

"But—but isn't Darla dead?"

Buffy's face was blank. "Wasn't Angel?"

**Sunday, December 31st, 2017  
the Gryphons' Home**

"We have a problem. Actually, several," Willow announced as she and Buffy stepped off the stairs. The Scooby Gang had migrated from the kitchen to the living room, due in no small part to Cordelia, who insisted on having somewhere comfortable to lounge after the Powers That Be assaulted her central nervous system.

"Oh, good," said Cordelia in a voice that suggested that, in their absence, she'd had more than the drink she was nursing now. "We were running short."

Giles, pointedly ignoring her, addressed Willow. "What do you mean?" 

"First, we have another dead vampire terrorizing Buffy's kids." When Giles looked concerned, she quickly filled him in about what Michael had said about Darla. He looked grim but said nothing, so she continued with the list of problems. "Secondly – and this one's really going to cheer you up – we have a mystery blood ritual on our hands."

Wesley's interests perked, and he pulled his attention from his tipsy wife.

"What do you mean?"

"This Darla-clone or whatever convinced Michael to go to Angel's grave and cut himself over it," Willow explained. 

"That sounds like v-very dark magic," Tara said, looking concerned.

"That's what I thought," Willow agreed. "Hence the problem."

"There—there's something else," Buffy volunteered shyly.

Giles noticed the delicate nature of her voice's timbre and affected his as to not hurt her. "What is it?"

She lowered her eyes. "When—right after Angel died, and I was in my not-so-sane state?"

The assembled company nodded awkwardly.

"Well, I was . . . not entirely alone."

Her friends looked confused.

Buffy shifted on her feet a little. "Angel—Angel was with me. He . . . he sat with me, and talked to me, and—and he was the one who told me I should . . . who convinced me to try and . . ."

She motioned helplessly.

"Drown yourself," Xander finished quietly, his eyes lowered too.

She nodded, a flush coloring the apples of her cheeks. "I thought, later, when I was feeling better, that it was just me being – you know, grief-stricken and crazy, but – but now that all these other people seem to be coming back from the dead. . . ?" She looked up. "It was just so real, guys."

Her friends nodded sympathetically; Willow squeezed her arm in reassurance.

"Well, all this does give us more to go on," Wesley said, trying for cheery but not really managing to cheer anyone. "We can look for mass hallucinations—"

"—and we can go through blood rituals," Giles added.

"I was not hallucinating," Buffy said darkly.

Wesley ignored her. "I believe there was a blood ritual practiced by Sumerian shamans that may be of particular interest; what day did you say Michael performed the ritual?"

"He didn't perform any ritual," Buffy protested, her tone plainly dangerous to anyone paying attention, which excluded Wesley. "That dead bitch conned him into slicing himself up over—"

"Fine," Wesley agreed absently. "But what day?"

Willow prevented Buffy from attacking the Watcher and answered him in her stead. "Two nights ago, Wes. The night of the twenty-ninth."

"Does anyone know the phase of the moon that night?"

"W-waxing crescent," Tara supplied.

"Would you raise the dead then?"

"You could," she theorized. "But there are b-better days."

"And if you're going to do something as risky as a blood sacrifice, you're going to play the best odds available to you," Willow added.

"Especially if you have to go through the trouble of duping someone else into giving their blood," Cordelia mumbled. 

"So much for the Sumerians," Xander sighed. Wesley did not look amused.

"Enough of this," Buffy announced loudly, sounding stressed. "We'll all research, yay." She turned to Giles. "Giles, do I need to take my son to the hospital?" 

He rose from the couch and began toward her. "I don't know. I'll have a look at him, all right?"

She nodded gratefully.

"Everyone else," he continued, beginning up the stairs, "Start researching."

Buffy and Giles were a long time coming down from Michael's room. Wesley left the Gryphons' to run to the Magick Shop and his home to pick up some books of particular relevance, but everyone else – sans Cordelia, who Xander carried up to the guest room after her Vision-migraine and her homemade remedy had her head lolling back against the couch cushions – stayed nervously in Buffy's living room, researching dead things and blood rites and trying hard not to worry too much about their friend and her child. Wesley was just tottering back to the makeshift study hall with his arms loaded past capacity with old tomes when his fellow Watcher began his descent back down the stairs.

All eyes flew to him and to Buffy, trailing him. Willow discarded her book completely to meet them as they stepped off the stairs.

"How is he?" she asked quietly of Buffy, gently taking her arm.

The Slayer shrugged. "I don't know. Bad? I mean, my little boy is slicing himself up and—" She took a deep breath, composed herself. "Giles says he's fine. He doesn't need a doctor, but he'd lost some blood, so we did a transfusion. Giles gave him some of mine."

"You have that kind of equipment in your _house_?" Xander asked gently.

She shrugged again and deadpanned, "We're warriors, Xand. People are always trying to kill us horribly. We have more medical equipment in this house than a lot of hospitals." She took another fortifying breath. "Anyone find anything?"

They all exchanged embarrassed looks.

"N-n-not yet," Tara mumbled.

Buffy sighed and came to sit on the sofa beside the witch, grabbing a selection from Wesley's tower.

"Guess we can't expect miracles," she lamented, opening the huge, dusty tome to a random page.

"Yeah," Xander agreed. "It's not like people are rising from the dead or anything." 

**Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

After finding out that Michael's listlessness was not viral but supernatural in origin – Buffy was _not_ generous with the details with her other kids, not even Reagan and Sara; she said it had something to do with Angelus but left it at that; they were Slayers but they were still her _babies_ – Buffy was anxious and overly protective of her children, even with heavy research mode going on round the clock all over the Gryphons' home. While Michael received the worst of it, Reagan was a close second since she had a great ugly wound in her neck that needed a bandage until Tuesday and left a faint scar after that. Reagan was shocked; she'd never had a _scar_. Buffy told her dully that she should plan on having it for at least a few months, but staunchly refused to elaborate on why she knew that.

Buffy's over-attentive mothering made patrolling highly questionable, which put Wesley directly at odds with the Slayer. The twins needed to be on the lookout for demon disturbances; they needed to be shaking down the usual suspects for any leads. This was important; they were the Slayers, for Christ's sake. Buffy and the skinny Watcher nearly came to blows several times; or, rather, Buffy nearly came to blows and Wesley nearly came to a concussion. Sara and Reagan, although they didn't dare say anything to the effect, agreed with Wesley: they were worried about Michael and about their father, and they wanted the bad guys stopped. And, more immediately, they were tired of being cooped up in the house and would love to help by pummeling things instead of paging through dusty old books.

In the end, Wesley won out. Giles very gently intervened and said that research alone was getting them nowhere. His case was aided somewhat by the Powers That Be via Cordelia's nervous system: she had several more Vision reruns while in the Gryphons' home helping research. All of this – and Cordelia's increasingly unpleasant demeanor as her pain escalated – finally wore down on Buffy's resolve that all of her children should stay safe under her care and within eyeshot.

**Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018  
Restfield Cemetery**

"It's so nice to be out of the house."

Sara was almost skipping. Reagan smiled wanly back at her.

"Yeah," she answered slowly, fumbling with her stake. "But I feel a little guilty. Everyone else is at home, and Mom's so freaked out . . ."

Sara huffed. "It's not like we're out partying. We're helping! Probably more than we'd be helping at home; neither one of us is much for bookwork."

"Hey," Reagan protested numbly. "I know stuff."

Sara sighed. "You know what I mean. We're Slayers; we're not meant to be all cooped up. This is our element." 

Reagan nodded. Sara was right. Of course she was right. She brought her free hand, the one without the stake, absently to her new scar. It didn't hurt anymore. It felt strange to have a wrongness of flesh with no pain. She would almost have preferred that it hurt. 

"You're right," she said softly. "I just feel a little guilty is all."

Sara sighed again. Reagan felt guilty entirely too often. For God's sake, Reagan, you're sixteen; be guilty later, when you're old and have more to feel guilty for than sex with a musician. She figured it was all the Mass Daddy had dragged her to. Sara had gone, too, a few times – it's not like Daddy went that often, and mostly he liked to go on his own, and she was happy to let him – but she'd failed to see the big picture behind it all. To her, it just seemed like another ritual: incense and Latin words, a sacrament. How was that different than a spell? She didn't understand. She prayed on her own, but it wasn't like how Daddy prayed. She'd watched him in church – she always ended up regretting going with him, and spent most of her time looking at the architecture and stained glass windows of the cathedral, at the priest, the other parishioners, at him – his head bowed, not paying attention to her not paying attention even though he always saw _everything_. He had always been so focused and so _solemn_, which weren't new things on him, but she was under the impression that her father didn't really believe in God. Not from anything he'd said – they weren't close enough that they spoke about things like that – but from things that she'd heard from her aunts and uncles and from her mother, from the fact that he didn't own a rosary or even wear a cross even though they warded off vampires and it was common sense, from the fact that in all the times they'd gone to Mass, she'd never seen him take the Eucharist. So she couldn't understand why he was so, so impacted by being in church. Why he'd go at all, why he'd kneel, why he'd bow his head, why he'd let the whole world fall away and ignore her ignoring the priest's words even though he never missed _anything_, never missed her rolling her eyes behind his back, or wearing a skirt shorter than _his_ dress code allowed, or sneaking in a minute past curfew even after he had supposedly gone to bed himself.

She figured it all came back to guilt. She'd heard people say that they only believed in God just to cover all the bases; Daddy wasn't like that, and she didn't really think that he had believed at all, but she'd finally asked him once, after a particularly long sermon, what he got out of all it.

His voice had been paper dry. "I have a lot to atone for, Sara."

And he'd walked past her to the car, which she could recall him doing approximately never. Not only did he never rush, he was as a matter of course and character both impeccably courteous and protective of his children. Looking back on it now, she couldn't think of a reason he'd hurry past her except to hide his face.

His statement had confused her then, but she guessed, now, with the information that she had now, that maybe he had a reason. That maybe he did have a lot to atone for. Two hundred years as a vampire must leave a lot of penance on the back end.

"What was he like?" Sara asked abruptly. 

Reagan started. "Huh?"

"Da—the vampire. What was he like?"

Reagan's hands curled around her stake so hard that her nails dug little half moons into the wood.

"Vulgar," she said darkly. She didn't think about it; the word came out automatically.

Sara's eyes flickered over her twin. Reagan's cheeks were drawn taut and slightly flushed. She wondered if she should stop, but this was business.

"What do you mean?"

"He said things," Reagan replied, voice low, muddy. "You know, they . . . taunt. But this was on a different level."

"How?"

"Sara—" she beseeched suddenly, her voice tinny and small.

Sara was surprised. If Reagan had gone on, asked her to stop, she would have. But she didn't go on, she didn't ask her to stop: Reagan just stopped walking in the dew-licked grass and looked over with her dark eyes all sorrowful and pleading.

So Sara repeated her question. "On a different level how?"

Reagan lowered her eyes but answered. It hurt, but it was business. This wasn't different than a bruise or a sprain or a knife wound. There was pain, but it had to be worked through; it was part of the job.

"He knew us, I guess. The things he said . . . they were personal, so they were worse. But it wasn't just that . . . everything he said had . . . had a basis of truth, he just spun it to something horrible." She raised her eyes, wet her lips nervously. "And there's something else. He's older than your run-of-the-mill vamp. I can feel it, and you can tell, talking to him, watching him move. He's confident and he's got reason to be: he's strong, and he's fast, and he's got skills. He got away from Mom and me both, and he took a bite out of me first."

"You thought he was Dad."

"Doesn't matter. One vampire against _two_ Slayers? He's good." She ruminated for another moment before speaking. "Remember how Giles told us that most of the vampires on the Hellmouth are young, fledglings? He's old, Sara, and it's different. The way he moves . . . it's like an animal. Not human, it's completely different, like a wolf, or . . . or a snake or something."

"But he looks like Dad still."

"Yeah," Reagan said, utilizing the bare minimum inflection needed to actually form words. "He still looks like Daddy. Except the eyes. They're . . . wrong. And his expressions aren't right, but he can . . . mimic."

"What do you mean? What's wrong with his eyes?"

"They're really dark. They're . . . dead. It's not—I'm not even sure it's a pigmentation thing, I think it's just what he does with his face."

"What do you mean?"

"Just . . . the way he moves, the expressions he makes with Daddy's face . . . they're completely different than how Dad moved and the expressions he made. He's a completely different person . . . only he's not a person. But he can mimic. He can pretend to be Daddy, and he can . . . he can come really close."

Sara's face, taut with interest, softened.

"Did he fool you?" she asked gently. "Is that . . . is that how he bit you? Did you think he was Daddy?" 

Reagan's mouth hardened into a thin line. "No."

"It's okay if—"

"He didn't fool me, Sara," Reagan replied, her tone controlled, betraying none of the fury ablaze in her eyes. "I knew what he was. I'm an empath, remember?" 

"Right," she murmured. "I know."

They walked along in the dark cemetery in silence for a long moment before questions itched too insistently for Sara to stand it.

"Did he have thrall?" she suggested. "I mean, Giles said that some of the older vamps have thrall, and if he beat you and Mom both—" 

Reagan rolled her eyes. "He did not have thrall. He was just . . . good. He was old and he was fast and strong and better than any vampire I've ever been up against."

"But—" 

"Shut up," Reagan murmured, distracted.

Confused by the command paired with the lack of conviction in her sister's tone, Sara complied, quickly scanned the dark cemetery around them. A whole lot of nothing but gravestones and moonlight.

"What's wrong?" she asked finally.

Reagan's brow was creased, and her free hand was pressed against her abdomen. She'd felt a brief wrench of pain, an echo of the pain from the other night when Darla had told her she was going to meet her teacher. . . . She couldn't breathe. They were just supposed to be doing reconnaissance; they were just supposed to be figuring out Cordelia's Vision. They weren't supposed to be meeting up with Angelus again, she couldn't . . . she couldn't face him by herself, Mom had promised that she'd be there . . .

"Reagan?" Sara asked cautiously.

Her sister turned to her in a movement that was almost a jerk, her eyes wider than predatory. Sara's hand tightened around her stake. 

"What's wrong?" she repeated.

Reagan didn't answer; she turned again in another jerk, to a sudden rustling behind them. Sara looked, too; two dark figures disappeared behind a mausoleum. She glanced back at Reagan; ironically, she seemed to relax.

"Not Angelus," Reagan breathed.

"You were expecting him?" Sara asked incredulously as they started off for the crypt.

Reagan's flush was visible even in the dim light. "No. I just . . . no."

"But—"

"Shut up, Sara."

They had come to the mausoleum. Reagan rested her hand against the cool stone and crouched down, peered over the side. There were two figures in dark robes preparing a pyre, their backs to the Slayers, and a third figure a few feet behind his brethren kneeling, spreading bones over the glistening ground, his head bent and shadowed beneath his dark cowl.

"Three against two," Sara murmured. "Not bad odds. You wanna just run in there, mess up their voodoo, or did you want a plan?"

Reagan was a moment in answering; the uneasy pain was still spidering through her womb.

"I don't think they're vampires," she said finally.

"Okay," Sara replied slowly. "But they're still making bad juju in a cemetery in the middle of the night. Some reason you want to give them the benefit of the doubt?" 

"No," Reagan said hesitantly. "They're—they're black hats, but . . . I—"

She stopped, her eyes widening. The black hat spreading bones finished with his task and stood, straightened. His hood fell back, revealing a pale face with no eyes: runes were burned angrily into the waxy skin instead.

"Sara," Reagan whispered urgently.

"Yeah, I see it," Sara replied quietly. Reagan looked paralyzed there, her eyes wide, watching; she wasn't even moving now that she was in his direct line of sight. Could he still see with no eyes? Sara wasn't sure, but she didn't really want to find out the hard way, so she pulled Reagan quickly from view, behind the cover of the mausoleum.

Reagan looked back at her, confused. "What . . . ?"

"Pay attention," Sara replied, her voice a razorblade whisper. "Aunt Cordy's had, like, four Visions about these guys; you're gonna get hurt if you don't keep it together."

"I'm together," Reagan said numbly.

Sara wasn't convinced, but this was hardly an opportune time to argue, so she let it go.

"So, what's the plan?" she asked instead, studying her sister's face for signs of resolve or weakness. They really could not afford Reagan to go freaking out about Angelus or anything else right now.

Reagan thought a moment before answering: "Maybe we should see what they're up to before we make with the violence. Gather intel? Because we've been batting zero with the book learning."

"Okay. But how long do we wait before we charge in and mess up their stuff?" 

Reagan's eyes widened suddenly.

"Until they figure out we're here and come to kill us with big, curvy knives," she said hollowly.

Sara wrinkled her brow. "Huh?" 

Reagan pointed behind her; Sara turned, looked up. One of the black hats was coming upon them, a wickedly curved shine of silver clutched in his pale hand.

Sara sighed. "Reagan, sometimes we really suck at this."

They jumped to their feet and rushed their attacker. Once he realized he had their attention, he stopped his sleepwalker pace and moved quickly, one arm slicing at Sara with the knife, the other throwing Reagan against the mausoleum. His brethren, alerted by the commotion, stopped tending their fire and came to meet Reagan as she came to her feet. They brandished eerily similar weapons, a fact she noted as the blades were whizzing past her face. _Cults,_ she thought dryly.

"Did you get those fun toys before or after your eyes were burned out?" she asked.

They were not amused, and she paid for her insult in blood; for not having eyes, they were strangely adept and pretty quick, and while she was wrestling the knife away from one of them, she missed the flash of the other blade and caught it across her back. She didn't know how far it had gone, just felt the heat of pain and the well of blood, and then the ice rush of panic. She couldn't. . . . The thought ran through her head just as the black hat she'd relieved of his weapon closed his hands around her arms, brought her back against him, held her still for his partner. She froze, even dropped her hold on the knife, as the second demon came upon her with his blade shining in the sinuous orange light of the fire. She whimpered quietly, but didn't squirm as he raised the knife inches from her.

And when he fell, suddenly, crumpling at her feet with an identical knife in his back, she didn't move, just stared dumbly at the scene before her. Sara, pleased with her perfect throw, had dispatched her attacker and seen Reagan in trouble; she'd expected that after she helped her out, Reagan would get her ass in gear and take care of number three. But she wasn't even moving, she was just standing there staring at the dead demon and letting the only live one have an opportunity to kill her or run off. Worried, but also too exasperated to wait for an explanation, Sara ran to the felled demon, yanked the knife out of his back, and then grabbed Reagan from the hands of the remaining black hat before he had a grasp on what was going on. She shoved her sister behind her and then turned on the demon, who was wisely opting for _run away_; she grabbed him by the shoulder before he could get too far and turned him to face her, slashed the curved blade across his throat. He folded to the ground soundlessly and she dropped the knife and turned back to Reagan, who hadn't even moved. She was standing in exactly the same place, stock still, looking down at the dead demon, her hand on her throat: her new scar.

Sara sighed. "Reagan." 

Reagan didn't move. Sara sighed again and picked up one of the curved blades from the dew-licked grass, then grabbed her sister's hand.

"Come on. I'm taking you home." 

**Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

"We ran into your eyeless guys," Sara announced as they trudged into the house. She was still dragging Reagan behind her, an expressionless, mute weight at the end of her arm. In the other hand, she carried the demons' dagger, still slick with their blood.

As she made this statement, the Watchers camped out in her living room stood: Giles to come and take Reagan, his face creased with concern; Wesley to collect information. Sara let him have the knife, too, because she was sick of carrying it, sick of having anything to do with the demons in her hands. She wanted a shower, but she knew she wouldn't be allowed to go anywhere until she'd been properly pumped for information.

"What happened?" Wesley asked, his eyes not on her but flickering between the blade she'd brought from patrol and the array of books spread over the coffee table and the couch, searching for an elusive title.

Sara shrugged and sank to a spot on the sofa that was free of tomes.

"Nothing that unusual. We were walking through Restfield, doing a basic patrol, and we saw some guys in black pajamas running behind a mausoleum. We followed, and it turned out to be your eyeless guys." 

"What were they doing?" the Watcher prodded, selecting a book from the coffee table and flipping through it.

Sara's attention wasn't really on him, though; Giles was coaxing Reagan to the other couch, getting her to sit down. She still looked stunned, petrified. Giles abandoned her for a moment and returned with a first aid kit and Buffy.

But Wesley expected an answer.

"They were burning something," Sara said slowly, watching her mother's lips tighten to a white line as she removed Reagan's jacket and watched the thin red slash blossom into a proper wound, the getting hurt that Wesley had promised wouldn't happen, "spreading bones out . . . some kind of ritual. But we didn't have a lot of time to find out; things got kind of violent."

The unpleasant sound of tearing fabric. Reagan writhed slightly under Giles's ministrations with the hydrogen peroxide; Sara wondered if that was a good sign or not.

"You couldn't have waited to see what they were doing?" Wesley asked. "It could have been beneficial to us."

"Um, not without getting really dead," Sara answered absently.

Buffy looked over at them, her eyes flashing.

"What is this we're talking about?" she asked. She was taking pains to keep her tone controlled, but it was still obviously dangerous to anyone who was paying attention to anything but the top note.

"Those guys without eyes," Sara answered quickly, before Wesley could say anything stupid. "You know, the ones from Cordelia's Visions."

Buffy wrinkled her brow. "No. Don't know. Tell me."

"You know, Cordelia's told us about her Visions—"

"And I've missed all the meetings. So fill me in. What guys without eyes?" 

Wesley was rifling around in his books for pictures of the knife, and Giles was bandaging the wound that it had made across Reagan's back, so it fell to Sara to fill Buffy in: "Monk demon guys. They don't have eyes, they have runes burned there instead . . ."

Buffy went pale.

"What?" Her voice was so soft that it was almost as though she'd mouthed the word.

An uneasy feeling went through Sara. All the way through: stomach, heart, bones. She glanced briefly at Giles; he was looking at Buffy, too, so she couldn't be the only one that was feeling it.

"I know, it's kind of majorly unpleasant," Sara said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, but not knowing anything else to put in its place. "Willow says it's for second sight . . ."

"I know this," Buffy said slowly, like she hadn't heard. "Angel . . ."

Reagan looked up abruptly, jerked out of Giles's hands, tape streaming from her back.

"No," she said adamantly, the stentorian nature of her voice unsettling when paired with her panicked eyes. Giles gently drew her against himself and talked quietly to her until she calmed.

"Harbingers," Wesley read from his book, shaking the demons' knife. "These demons are Harbingers, high priests of a . . . some higher demon—" He went to turn the page, but didn't have to.

"The First Evil," Buffy said coldly.

**Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

Giles took Reagan up to her room and finished dressing her wound, then insisted that she get ready for bed. She promptly burst into tears, frazzled at the proposition, and he held her until she calmed and then retrieved Buffy from downstairs, where she was getting into a heated argument with Wesley about why hadn't she identified the Harbingers earlier. The phrase, "I'm sorry I was so distracted by my dead husband, Wesley!" came up several times, but Giles arrived just before Buffy started getting violent.

Sara followed a few steps behind her mother and Watcher, and then stayed behind after Buffy had shut the door on herself and Reagan.

"Giles?" Sara chanced after a long moment of silence. It was almost like the hospital again: the anxiety of waiting in taut quiet.

He turned to her; he looked almost startled by her voice.

"Giles, on patrol . . . when we fought the . . . the Harbinger guys?"

He was looking concerned now. "Yes?"

"I don't—I don't want to get Reagan in trouble or anything, but I'm worried. She—she just froze. She was fine, at first, but then she got pinned and she just lost it. She didn't fight back; she didn't even move."

"She's not badly hurt," he said after a long moment. He sounded uncertain, not about Reagan's condition, but about his own footing.

"No, I know," Sara agreed. "I think . . . I think she's really freaked out about Angelus." The word came out automatically, this new name for the thing that _wasn't_ her father, but once it had been uttered, it felt foreign and sour in her mouth, and she regretted saying it. It took her a long time to make her mouth feel sound enough to continue speaking. "When we first saw those Harbinger guys, she was really relieved, even though we knew they were really bad news because of all of Aunt Cordy's Visions. She was just really relieved that it wasn't—" She forced the word—"Angelus. I mean . . . this whole thing with Dad is beyond horrible, and I can't imagine being bitten, but she wasn't just a little off her game. She had _no game_."

Again, he was a moment in responding. "Perhaps we should have your mother speak with her. She's been bitten before; she may have the best idea of what to say to her. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of time."

Sara's voice was low: "Mom's been bitten?" 

Giles's face tautened dramatically; he looked gaunt and old, severe. Sara was almost frightened, but she didn't have to deal with the coming storm – or get to hear an answer to her question, either – because at that moment Buffy emerged from Reagan's room looking drawn but strangely centered, much further from the fury she'd been with Wesley just moments earlier.

"I got her calmed down," she said, shutting the door behind her. "She—"

"You and I need to have a word," Giles interjected quickly, his voice low, solemn.

Buffy stopped speaking, stopped moving; the hollows of her cheeks darkened and her eyes zeroed in on him.

"About Reagan," he finished. "Sara, go downstairs."

The girl was startled. "What?" 

"Go downstairs," he repeated quietly.

His tone didn't harden but Buffy's eyes flashed, so Sara forced herself to obey, even though it meant leaving in the wake of a multitude of gnawing questions.

Reagan wasn't sleeping when the dark sanctity of her room was breached. Her eyes weren't even closed: she was staring mutely at the ceiling and trying to bring her breathing to something mimicking the movement of the tides, one hand pressed against her sternum, keeping track of the beat of her heart, the other over her throat, stilling the unsoundness in her flesh.

She didn't stir when her mother came and sat on the edge of her bed, because the demon sense didn't stir within _her_. Buffy looked down at her child under the glow afforded by the hallway light streaming in through the half-open door and frowned. Reagan's posture was beyond guarded and her eyes were spooked, like a wounded horse's. Buffy ran a hand through the girl's hair, then gently placed her hand over Reagan's on her throat. She closed her hand around her daughter's and lifted it from her neck. Reagan tensed but ultimately didn't fight.

"Giles tells me you had a little problem on patrol," Buffy murmured. 

Reagan jolted ungracefully into a sitting position so that she didn't have to lie prone while her mother attacked her. It was an animal decision, primal and rash, and she felt almost dirty when she realized her motive, covering her soft spots against the predator. Then she didn't care. She wrenched her hand from Buffy and let it hover over her throat again.

"What did he say?" she snarled. "He wasn't even there."

Her mother didn't flinch. "Sara told him—"

"It's none of her business! I—"

Buffy reacted now, her jaw tightening. "Don't be stupid. Of course it is. She's your sister and she cares about you, and even if she didn't, on the battlefield you two are partners and every mistake you make could mean her life." 

Reagan's tongue went soft in her mouth.

Buffy continued seamlessly, letting her voice gentle some, "I'd like to take you into my lap, Reagan, and rock you and tell you that everything's all right, that nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. I'd like to let you mourn for your father and for the things you lost in meeting Angelus on your own time, in your own way. But I can't. We're warriors, and this is a time of war, and we don't have that luxury. We don't have the _time_. It's not fair, but that's the way it is."

Reagan didn't say anything, but she could feel the hot well of anger inside her release, like a weight slowly dissipating from inside her chest. She watched her mother silently as the woman continued speaking, as she slowly, meditatively began to unbutton the first few buttons of her cardigan and push the plush fabric off her collarbone. Reagan recognized the gesture from the other night, but didn't flinch.

"I was your age the first time I was bitten. It wasn't a deep bite, either, but it stunned me, and the vampire that did it drowned me. I was alone, no one there to help me, and he drowned me. Your daddy and Uncle Xander got there in time to do CPR and resuscitate me, and I killed the bastard, but . . . I _died_ . . ." She ran the pads of her fingers over the joint of her neck. "Didn't leave a mark, though. I was eighteen – Eve's age – when I was bitten again. That . . . he took a lot. It almost killed me. And it . . . it left a scar."

Even with the light from the hallway, it was dark in Reagan's room, too dark to see the small imperfection of flesh, but Reagan didn't need to see it to know what her mother was talking about. She'd seen the mark many times before.

"You've always said you were in a car accident," Reagan accused softly after a long moment.

"I lied," Buffy replied.

A few weeks ago, Reagan would have been outraged. Now she was so jaded that it didn't even faze her.

"Did you kill him?" she asked. "The vamp that did it to you?"

Her mother was quiet a long moment, blonde head bent. "Twice."

Reagan wrinkled her brow. "What? I—" Realization dawned. "It was Dad."

Buffy raised her eyes. She looked so sad.

"Yeah," she whispered.

"But why—" Reagan's heart constricted with dread. "Not Angelus—"

"No! No, of course not. Angel."

"But why? He loved you, why would he—" 

"Long story short: he was dying, Slayer blood was the only cure. I made him do it."

"But he almost killed you. . . ?"

"In love with me or not, a dying vampire isn't real big with the self-control. I knew what the risks were. I did what I had to do."

Reagan still had her hand on her throat. Buffy wanted to take it in her own again, to help her _stop_, but she wouldn't. All she could do was show her the path: Reagan had to take the first step on her own.

"Anyway, my point here is: me and dying at the business end of a vamp? Very intimate. But I got over it." She paused. "I almost didn't, though."

Reagan frowned. "What do you mean?"

"The first time, when I drowned? I didn't handle it. I just . . . didn't. I shut everyone out, and it nearly lost me Angel and Xander, nearly got Giles and Willow and Cordelia all killed."

Reagan lowered her eyes. Her hand fell to her collarbone.

"You have to be strong, Reagan. I know that it sucks to have to be the strong one . . . but that's the good part. I'm here, and I _know_. So no matter how strong and brave you have to be, I'm always going to be here, getting your back, being just a little bit stronger and a little bit braver. Because I'm your mom, and that's what we do. Just a little bit more."

Reagan raised her eyes. Her hand fell to her lap.

"Okay," she said softly. "I can do it." 

Buffy smiled. "That's my girl."

**Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

Buffy walked downstairs after consoling Reagan feeling strangely hollow, stripped of things she had never dreamed of telling her children, things she had spent years crafting lies to protect. She shook her head to stir the thoughts loose. Reagan would be fine, and that's what mattered. She would not lose a child the way she had lost herself.

She became aware of harsh male voices emanating from the living room: Wesley and Giles butting heads over any number of things. For the millionth time, Buffy wished her husband were alive; he had always been a calming presence and a voice of reason, even to Giles, who had trusted him least of anyone, and especially to Wesley, who had been high-strung and overcompensating since his friend's death.

Buffy knew she couldn't stand the tension of the Watchers' fight – and she had been avoiding the kitchen whenever possible – so she took the only escape that wasn't retreat and walked to Eve's rooms. The girl's bedroom was empty, but the light was on in her studio; Buffy found her daughter sitting at a low table in a tank top and pajama pants, her hair pulled up off her neck, her hands dark with charcoal. The air was sweet with the smoke of her clove cigarettes, and she was alternating between which fingers she held the cigarette and the stick of charcoal. In magician's twists, she'd switch the black sticks as she took a drag or applied a new line to the snowy paper she was carving a figure on.

"Eve, sweetheart, you're not supposed to smoke in the house."

The girl's head was bent, her back to her mother, and Buffy could see the unnatural dark spine of her power center flare livid as the words hit the air. The cigarette in her hand ashed an inch off the end. 

"Sorry," she muttered, taking a fresh drag.

Buffy sighed and pulled up a chair beside her daughter, looked at the pad she was sketching on. The image hit her in a nauseous volley to the gut. Couldn't catch a break today.

"I didn't know you could draw from memory like that," Buffy said slowly. "You're as good at that as he was."

"It's not from memory," Eve replied dully, moving the pad and revealing an old photograph of Angel. "I can't do that."

"Oh," Buffy said dumbly, unable to take her eyes off the dual images, but knowing that she needed to before she started crying. "Well, he was kind of a freak with that photographic memory thing anyway. It's really good, though, Eve. You have real talent."

Eve caught her mother's voice fading to nothing, or noticed that she had frozen, and moved the pad and the photograph away. She even stubbed out her cigarette in a nearby ashtray, playing nice.

"Thanks," she said, rising from the table.

Buffy looked up at her druggedly. "Huh?"

"You said it was good, my picture, that I'm talented. Thank you."

"Oh," Buffy replied weakly, thawing. "You're welcome, baby."

"Not even close to a photographic memory," Eve said quietly, suddenly. "I felt like I was forgetting his face. That's stupid, right? I mean, he's been dead a week and a half."

She looked down at the drawing of her father – she really was talented, and the likeness was chilling – and its smaller, faded twin lying beside it on the table, then down at her stained hands. Buffy only followed her daughter's gaze as far as the photograph; she wondered where Eve had found that picture. It _was_ faded, and there was something wrong with it, with Angel's pose; he wasn't looking at the camera – because he never did; if he caught sight of the thing then he was out of frame in a second – but he looked like he was shying away from something. Looked almost painfully guarded.

And then Buffy noticed how young he looked, and how sad, and realized that the picture must have been taken while he was still a vampire.

"Maybe it's a defense mechanism or something," Eve continued. "You know, so it doesn't hurt so bad. Something that naturally happens after death." 

Buffy looked up abruptly. Eve was still looking at her hands, her eyes shining.

"Maybe that's it," Buffy said kindly. "Everyone deals with grief differently, and your mind does all sorts of things to help make it easier for you."

Eve looked up at her mother. "What about . . . has it happened to you?" 

Buffy frowned. "No. I kind of wish it would; I keep having dreams about him, with his face, his voice. . . . It would be easier to forget."

"You don't really want to forget him." 

"For a little while, I would love to."

As soon as the words left her mouth, she flinched. Just out in the air, they sounded acerbic. She started to explain, to soften the blow, but Eve shook her head.

"No, I get it." She looked down at her drawing again. "And I . . . I'm not really forgetting, I'm just . . . things are blurring, I guess. And for a little while, I wanted him back in sharp focus."

Buffy closed the distance between them, took the girl in her embrace, pressed a kiss to her hair. 

"It's gonna be all right, baby. We're gonna get through this."

Eve stepped away from her mother, met her eyes. 

"Sara told me something about Daddy . . . something I wanted to ask you about."

"Okay."

"This thing about him being a vampire—"

Buffy took a deep breath. "Eve, you don't even need to worry about that, we're going to take care of it—"

She shook her head. "That's not what I want to know. She said that he was a vampire before, right, and that he . . . he had a soul?"

Buffy closed her eyes for a moment under duress.

"That's right," she said softly, opening them again. Can't hide forever.

To her surprise, Eve flushed. Violently.

"That son of a bitch."

Buffy hadn't expected that reaction at all.

"Eve!" she cried, not in censure, but concern.

The girl was not just flushed now, but hyperventilating, clawing at her arms and chest with her charcoal-stained hands. The action left black smudges over her enflamed flesh, but she didn't notice, didn't care. Buffy reached out for her, to touch her, to calm her down, but Eve jerked away. She almost tried again, but then she understood: Eve's emotions were out of control, and if she touched Buffy, she could knock her out. Angel had taught her to control her demon essence, and she wasn't as powerful as a full-blooded demon, but she could still hurt her. Buffy withdrew her hand and let her daughter rage.

"My whole life, I . . . he knew what it was like to be part demon, and he never . . . he never said _anything_ to me. . . . If I was his _real_ daughter, he would have told me . . ."

"Oh, Eve, sweetheart, no, you know that's—he didn't tell anybody, baby, he didn't want you guys to know . . . and you know you're his real daughter, don't be ridiculous . . ."

Eve started sobbing, harsh angry tears made gray by her black fingers pushing them away. She curled her head into her hands and Buffy caught sight of her power center blazing furiously; a knot of panic condensed in her throat.

"Eve, sweetie, you _have_ to calm down, you're going to hurt yourself . . ."

Buffy wished she could touch her daughter; if she could just put her hands on her, then she could soothe her to quiet, but she couldn't . . . for a moment she, too, was struck by a blade of fury at Angel, not for his not telling Eve about being a vampire once upon a time, but for his never explaining to _her_ well enough how Eve's demon half worked. She hadn't gotten along with Jhiera the few brief times they'd met, especially because she had suspected that she and Angel had more of a past than he was letting on; Jhiera lurked around him like a cat in heat, always arching around him, almost touching him, her power center lighting up like a damn Christmas tree every time he came within a few feet of her. Angel had told Buffy that females of Jhiera's breed of demon went into violent heat every few years and that, in sating it, Jhiera had "lowered herself" – her words, not his, he'd apologized – into taking a human consort, and that's how she'd become pregnant with Eve. She hadn't even known she _could_ become pregnant by a human, and she'd been furious; it was beneath her, and besides, she didn't have time for a child.

Buffy hadn't really cared to learn much more about Eve's birthmother after hearing that, and she wasn't really much for history anyway, or the sort of concentration and trancing exercises that Angel worked Eve through in order to harness her power, so she'd pretty much let him handle it. She trusted him, and more than that, she had always just assumed that he would _be there_ to take care of things, and now, she realized with a nauseating mix of shame and dread, she wasn't sure she knew enough about her daughter's condition to help her.

"Eve, please, please calm down, I promise, it's okay . . ."

In her jerking, agony-fueled movements, Eve bowed in half and lurched over the little table; one of her hands fell over her sketch. It ignited on contact, curling up into a blossom of bright flames. Immediately, Eve withdrew her hand; the flush painting her began to pale just as quickly as it had arisen, and she drew her hand up to her mouth in shock.

"Oh . . ." she moaned, her dark eyes reflecting the dance of the inferno.

"It's okay," Buffy murmured encouragingly, beyond relieved that Eve's fury had broken, and looked around for something not covered in turpentine to put the fire out with before the fire alarm got set off _again_. She found a paint-splattered drop cloth under some easels and used that to smother the flames; it took a matter of seconds, and by that time, Eve was just pale and shaken, her power center dark and dormant again, and Buffy wasted no time in folding the girl in her embrace.

"It's okay," she said again, holding Eve close, rubbing her back. She could feel the sharp ridge of the girl's power center beneath her tank top; it was cool, she was cool all over, when just a second ago she'd been molten, hot enough to start fires, to tear herself apart.

"I didn't mean to—"

"I know, baby. It's okay."

Eve pushed herself out of her mother's arms, far away enough that she could look her in the eye.

"I don't really—I'm not really mad at him, I just . . ." She started crying again, but not like before: the tears slipped quietly, sadly down her face, and there was no flush or anger to her at all. One of Buffy's hands was still on the girl's unnatural spine, and she didn't feel it flare at all. "I just don't understand why all this had to happen to him and to us, and I just . . ." She looked forlornly at her charred drawing. "I didn't mean to do that . . ."

She started crying in earnest, softly, and Buffy took the girl into her arms again as her head bent, as she started to fall to her knees. 

"It's okay, baby. It's going to be okay." 

**Thursday, January 4th, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

Buffy spent over an hour calming Eve down, watching her clean her face and thin, bare arms of charcoal – she wasn't allowed to help now that Eve was fine: the girl was too big for mothering unless she was in pain or panic, the way Reagan was and the way, Buffy feared, that Sara would be soon – and then talking to her about Angel. More secrets that Buffy had been cleaving to with her last breath, but mostly not: mostly silly, stupid things, sweet things, things she was happy to let Eve have. Things Angel would have wanted her to have, memories she should have of her father.

The kinds of memories she would have continued building of him, if he hadn't been taken by . . . what? That was the question, wasn't it? Taken by cancer, taken by Angelus, taken by the First Evil? Buffy felt uncomfortable in her own skin; there wasn't enough room for her in it, not when she had to share it with all these nagging questions. There was a piece they were missing and the piece might mean having Angel back.

Not a small piece.

She'd talked to Giles and Willow and they'd agreed: when she'd brought up the Kalderash curse – reluctantly, really not wanting to go there except as a last resort – they'd all been hesitant, saying that since there were problems with the "Angel is back as a vampire" theory – that he hadn't been invited in, that he would have had to climb through six feet of consecrated ground and yet had appeared in the Gryphons' kitchen unscathed, not to mention the fact that it seemed impossible that he'd been vamped at all – that the resouling might not work . . . and that they could call Angel's soul forth only for it to have no body to anchor itself in. Not a good scenario.

Any way you looked at it, things ended up bad: the monster that had haunted her dreams longer than any other was now haunting the streets again, and her strongest ally was gone when she needed him most. She just needed . . . to not think about it. That would be good.

After saying goodnight to Eve, she peeked in on Wesley and Giles – their argument had died out, and they were devoting all their energy to research again – and then went upstairs to check on the rest of her children, hoping for no more upsets. The twins were both asleep, in their own rooms as a change from what had become the norm since Angel had fallen ill. Michael was sleeping peacefully: the nightmares had stopped after Cordelia's Vision. Buffy wondered if the First was letting up, or if this was just the eye of the storm. She fretted over him a minute even though he didn't need any fretting over, straightening his covers and hovering over him, even though _he's fine, Buffy, he's fine,_ and then forced herself to leave him to his sleep and check on Lexi.

To her surprise, the child was awake.

"Lexi, sweetheart, it's—" She glanced at her watch. "—two in the morning. What's wrong, can't you sleep?"

Lexi raised her arms for Up, and her mother responded just as she'd hoped, bending down and scooping her up into her warm embrace and then sitting back down on the bed with her, back where the snuggly covers were.

"It's too quiet. Everyone's quiet," Lexi replied when she was comfy. "They're afraid I'll hear about the bad things. They don't know I know things on my own."

Buffy frowned.

"Sweetheart, do you have questions you need to ask about your daddy?"

Lexi scrunched up her brow, too, her face a tiny mimic of her mother's. "Do you?"

Buffy took a deep breath, forced herself to be calm and focused. "Lexi, do you know what happened to your daddy?"

The frown faded from Lexi's little face, too. "Yes."

Buffy almost frowned again; she was only pretending to be calm, but Lexi looked like she was actually there. It was a little unnerving.

"You know that . . . that he died, right, sweetheart?" Buffy prodded. "That he's not going to be coming back?"

Lexi narrowed her kitten-blue eyes. "He already came back. That's the problem." 

**Thursday, January 4th, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

Everything seemed strangely fine the next day: Reagan had, at least to public appearances, recovered from her Angelus issues, and Eve was doing much better after coming face-to-face with her problems concerning her father and his death and her demon half. She was a little more reserved than normal, but for the most part she was all right. Even Michael seemed to be feeling better; he got out of bed for breakfast and wanted to hang out in the den and watch TV with Eve; Buffy was overjoyed to let him, ecstatic that he was out of bed, some more color back in his cheeks.

In the living room, research continued. The Scooby Gang drifted in and out in overlapping shifts with books and food and coffee; occasionally someone would take Lexi out somewhere or tidy up the mass of plates and mugs that was collecting around Giles and Wesley, who never rotated; they were a constant fixture, like the books: their pattern and location changed somewhat, but they were always _there_ somewhere. 

Xander and Mary had taken Lexi to the park and Chloe was keeping the twins company/reading Rolling Stone when somebody finally found something worth talking about.

"Maka-Inyan," Giles said suddenly, just as everyone had lulled into a stupor. 

"What?" Reagan supplied helpfully, looking up from a thick text three centuries older than she was.

"The Ritual of Maka-Inyan is a blood ritual associated with the First. Since the First cannot be corporeal—"

"Huh?" Chloe interjected, looking up from a glossy spread of Grammy previews.

"Corporeal," Wesley repeated. "It means it has no real body, no tangible form." 

"It's ghosty," Reagan interpreted.

"Oh," Chloe said.

"Since the First cannot be corporeal," Giles continued as though he hadn't been interrupted, "it cannot give any blood of its own; therefore, it has to procure a sacrifice from a willing participant. While the First does not have thrall per se, its powers of persuasion are—"

"Good," Buffy said tersely.

"Yes," Giles agreed. "Good."

"Why doesn't she just have her minion guys give blood?" Sara asked, frowning. "The Harbingers? I mean, if they're going to burn out their eyes for her, they're really playing for the home team; I'm sure they'd be willing to spill a little blood. And wouldn't that be a lot easier and a lot less dangerous than duping innocents into participating in the First's Evil Blood Drive?"

Giles was a moment in answering, lost in scanning the text. "It prefers pure blood. There are other blood rituals associated with the First, and they, too must be pure blood, but those the Harbingers can procure via force—"

"What does that mean?" Chloe asked, looking like she already knew.

"That means they can kill the person," Reagan said gently. "Forced donations, kinda." 

"—but the Ritual of Maka-Inyan is specific and singular in its need for blood given _freely_."

"Like Michael," Sara said quietly.

"Like Michael," Giles affirmed.

"Why?" Chloe asked. "Blood's blood. I mean, my moms are witches, I know stuff about magic; I get the difference with pure versus unclean blood or whatever. But why do they care how it got there?"

"Because how it gets there is another ingredient," Wesley answered. "It's part of the ritual. This is a very _specific_, very powerful ritual. It's not a muffin recipe; they're raising the dead, remember."

Buffy was getting tired of all this peas-and-carrots talk. She wanted the meat. 

"What, exactly, does the ritual _do_?" she asked. 

"Well it raises—" Wesley started.

"Yeah, the dead, I'm on that page, Wes. But if it just brought a dead body up, my husband would be here, or some zombie, not the vampire son of a bitch I last saw parading around wearing Angel's face. So let's be a tad more specific."

Wesley floundered. He didn't have all the information; for one thing, Giles had the book.

Giles glanced briefly down at the text. "I'm not sure. It's confusing, because there are rituals associated with the First that allow it specifically to bring vampires up from the underworld, and that's not what this was."

Reagan wrinkled her nose. "The First makes vampires?"

"Not . . . traditional vampires," Giles said, scanning the text. "Turok-Han, some sort of ancestral precursor to the vampires you girls are used to facing."

"So that would be a no go as far as raising Angelus," Sara guessed. 

"I assume not," Giles agreed.

Buffy was getting impatient again.

"So this Make-It-Inland ritual. What does it _do_?"

"Maka-Inyan," Giles corrected. "As far as I can tell, the Ritual of Maka-Inyan raises a body for the First to imbue with its essence—"

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Say again?"

"The First has the power to imbue mortals with its essence—"

"To make them evil?" Sara interrupted before he could finish 'saying again.'

"No," Giles said patiently. "It doesn't make them evil, merely supplements their physical bodies with its strength."

Reagan frowned. "That's kind of a big gamble on her part, right? Wouldn't a person need to have a lot of hate in them for that to do her any good?"

Buffy smiled sadly. "A lot of people have a lot of hate in them, sweetie."

Reagan looked concerned. "But not Daddy. He was a good man."

"That's where I'm having trouble understanding the ritual," Giles said. "Angel was a champion; he's not the kind of person the First is likely to choose as her vessel."

"The First, in fact, isn't in the habit of choosing dead people at all, which is another reason we're confused," Wesley added, insinuating himself into Giles's pronoun. "So the ritual as a whole makes no sense; it's a ritual designed specifically to do something that the First doesn't like to do."

"With a subject who doesn't fit the First's criteria for crusader," Sara added.

"Actually, that's where the news is happy," Giles corrected. "The only thing that matches with the Ritual of Maka-Inyan is that in the only other recorded cases, the person who was risen was someone who did not fit the First's usual standards for a vessel: a champion or an upstanding citizen of some type."

"Which tells us that we're missing something about what she's doing with the bodies," Buffy concluded.

"Can I just say 'ew' to that statement?" Chloe asked, grimacing.

"Is there any information available about what happened after the other bodies were raised?" Reagan asked, ignoring her friend.

"Unfortunately, no," Giles answered.

"We're lucky to have found this," Wesley added, "Information on the First is very sparse."

"She doesn't like to leave fingerprints," Sara guessed.

Reagan frowned. "If she's incorporeal, then she _can't_." 

**Thursday, January 4th, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

Michael's ritual found, the flurry of traffic and constant study in the Gryphon home tapered dramatically. Even Wesley and Giles went home, looking bedraggled, carting away most of the books that blanketed Buffy's living room. To an outside observer, she thought wryly as she watched Wesley trip over himself, dripping ancient demonic tomes everywhere, they all must look crazy. Of course, an outside observer may not be wrong, she concluded a moment over, catching herself with the Harbinger's dagger in one hand and one of Lexi's tiny pink sneakers in the other while tidying up.

It was odd to have the house so quiet after the constant never calm of the past few days and nights. Odd but comforting; it was nice to not have the house buzzing with stress and arguments and turning pages. And she wasn't worried by the calm: she could just take it as the eye of the storm without seeing the tempest surrounding her on all sides.

For a while, anyway.

Buffy tidied the wreck of the living room left by a week of having the room serve as hostel and base camp in the search for information on the First and then on Michael's ritual. Then she washed an over-flowing sink full of dishes and started the laundry, which she was behind on again. Ah, domestica.

Pleasantly exhausted by non-crucial things, Buffy started up the stairs to collapse into bed. And was met with a problem.

"Sara."

Her daughter was sitting on the stairs, silent, still; Buffy didn't know how long the she'd been there, but she hadn't noticed the girl during her cleaning . . . not, in fact, until she was right upon her.

Sara looked up almost druggedly. "Hey."

Buffy was worried; lurking about was not Sara's province. She went and sat on the stairs beside her child.

"What's up, sweetie?"

The girl studied her feet; her long dark hair obscured her face in heavy curtains. "Nothing."

Buffy's brow raised. "Nothing? Okay, you're the worst liar ever. What's going on, huh?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I guess . . . it's just all this stuff, Daddy and Reagan, and a new huge evil . . . it's all pretty heavy. I'm okay, it's just not really sleep-conducive."

Buffy cupped the girl's face in her hand, smiling sadly.

"Welcome to the big leagues."

**Saturday, January 6th, 2018   
the Gryphons' Home**

Buffy's quiet was short-lived; Giles called her early the next afternoon in an uncharacteristic excitement, and soon after there was a congregation in her living room again: Giles, Wesley, Cordelia, Xander, Buffy herself, and her twins. Apparently Giles and Wesley's going home and putting the books away hadn't lasted that long; they'd gotten the books back out all over Cordelia's kitchen table – much to her annoyance, apparently; she was still looking fairly needled, although she was also looking perfectly coiffed, which suggested that she hadn't had a Vision lately, the usual source of her needling – and found something that everyone needed to know _right now_.

"What's the what, Giles?" Buffy asked once everyone was assembled. 

"Angelus," Giles said.

"He isn't a real vampire!" Wesley burst.

Buffy and Willow exchanged wry glances. "Uh huh."

"They've been doing this double team act all night," Cordelia said dully. "And all the way over in the car."

Giles took on an annoyed expression and continued. "No, listen. The First is very powerful, but it doesn't have the power to manifest a vampire by itself. It requires a blood sacrifice, correct?"

Buffy shrugged listlessly. "Sure." 

"And even _with_ this blood sacrifice, it still cannot turn a human into a vampire. Correct?"

Buffy shrugged again. "As far as I know."

"But it _is_ within its power to infuse a human being with its essence. Its strength, as it is."

Willow was playing catch-up. "So . . . what? The First infused Angel with herself?"

Buffy shook her head. "That wouldn't make him a vampire. He'd just be . . . well, he'd still be dead. That doesn't sound like the best warrior to head your evil crusade."

Cordelia's brow wrinkled, her eyes fell to the floor, narrowed, as she struggled with something inside herself. "Maybe . . . what if the First killed him? Like, for a reason? Maybe . . . maybe that's why I got sent the Vision. I mean, the PTB couldn't expect me to save Angel from cancer, but they could warn me about the new big bad coming to town with Puppet Angel at its right hand." She looked up to her stunned-to-silence friends. "I mean, could she do that? Does the First have that kind of power?"

Sara shook her head emphatically. "No. No. Giles said that the First couldn't be corporeal. That she couldn't touch you. How do you kill people without touching them? You can't just say to someone, 'Oh, you're dead,' and expect them to keel over. It doesn't work like that."

A strange look came over Reagan's face. "Actually, you can. Native tribes in Africa used to . . . when they wanted someone dead, the whole tribe, sans that person, would come together and think about them dying. They'd do this for hours, every day for like two weeks. And then one day, a representative from the tribe would come up to the guy no one liked and say, 'The entire tribe has been wishing for your death for two weeks.' And sure enough, the guy would turn up dead within a couple of days."

Willow smiled a little half-smile. "That's just witchcraft, Reagan."

She shook her head. "The focusing your energy part, yeah. But that's not what killed him; what killed him is when they told him—"

"Reagan has a point," Wesley said slowly. "How much control does your mind have over you? Is your perception of the world powerful enough to overrule the true, natural state of things?"

Cordelia huffed. "We so don't have time for a philosophical debate."

Buffy shook her head. "No, I get what you're saying. Like . . . maybe if Angel believed that the First was killing him, she could? Without even . . ." She choked a little. "Without her even having to touch him?" She lowered her eyes and said softly, "When he died, he wasn't looking at me. He asked me for help, and then . . . I couldn't get him to look at me. He wasn't looking away, he was really, _really_ looking at something else."

"Maybe the First was there," Cordelia finished for her, tone uncommonly gentle. "She was there but you couldn't see her."

Buffy pursed her mouth. "No. No, it couldn't have been the First that killed him. He was sick, he died."

Cordelia wrinkled her brow, confused and a little hurt. Buffy had been on her side, just a moment ago . . .

"Come on, Buffy," she urged. "Then why would he come back as a vampire?"

She shook her head, cheeks drawn taut. "I don't know. I don't know, it doesn't matter. It wasn't the First, it was cancer—"

Giles looked at her curiously. "Why are you fighting this?"

Buffy was quiet a long time before answering, her eyes on the ground. "Because if the First killed him, I should have been able to stop it. If it was a demon, I should have been able to help him." She brought her red-rimmed eyes up to her Watcher. "And I couldn't. He's dead."

Giles took a step toward her and folded her in his arms. She went unyieldingly, allowed herself to be comforted. After a moment, she pushed him off, sniffling slightly and working her mouth more than she needed to, trying to control herself, keep herself from crying. She looked around the group with a defeated expression.

"That was it, wasn't it? It was the First." Her voice cracked. "And all of this is my fault."

"Nice try, Buff," Xander said after a moment. "But you're not lumping this on you. How are you supposed to know if some hugely-powerful, invisible demon is killing your husband?" She opened her mouth to protest; he cut her off before she could make a sound. "This thing flew under all of our radar. There's no way you could have known, short of Angel saying something. Which he didn't."

She didn't look appeased, but she stayed quiet.

Sara didn't. Brow creased, she asked, "But I don't understand. How could the First kill him? I mean . . . okay, let's say I buy the whole African natives mind-over-matter thing. But . . . why would Daddy believe that she was killing him? I mean, if she couldn't touch him, why would he think that?"

Giles was wearing the detached expression of deep thought. "Well . . . Angel has always been very suggestible where the First has been concerned. You remember, Buffy, the first time it visited him?"

Buffy broke out of her silent reverie and nodded slowly.

"He . . . he couldn't tell the difference between . . . he thought that she was really a person there with him." She laughed a little, a dry, bitter laugh. "She even had him convinced that _she_ was the reason he'd come back from Hell, not the Powers."

Sara and Reagan exchanged bewildered expressions.

"Wait," Sara started. "What do you mean, the first time?"

"And what do you mean, Hell?" Reagan interrupted.

Buffy turned to each girl as they spoke. She let her gaze rest on Reagan for a moment; they sat in silence for a second, Buffy smiling oddly. "That . . . I can't. I'll tell you another time. Maybe when you're older."

Reagan frowned. "We're ready now!"

Buffy smiled her odd smile again. "I'm not." She turned to Sara. "The First haunted Angel when he came back from Hell." Reagan started to interject, but Buffy cut her off. "Which is something we'll discuss later, when your mother is a little stronger." She paused. "Angel was weak, and hurt, and the First came to him . . ."

"It drove him half mad," Giles said quietly.

"She told him to kill me," Buffy continued. "She gave us dreams—"

"That you two shared," Reagan guessed, her mouth twisting into a bitter bow.

Buffy looked at her oddly. "Yes." She paused. "Something you'd like to share?"

She shifted awkwardly. "Before, when Daddy was sick . . . I had some dreams. I mean . . . they were nightmares, they . . . they were his _memories_, he was there and it . . . it was things I couldn't possibly have known."

"You watched him kill people," Buffy said softly.

Reagan nodded miserably. "I should have told someone. Maybe then—"

Buffy shook her head. "You couldn't have known." She turned to Sara. "What about you? Did you have the dreams, too?"

Sara shook her head. "No." 

"But you were distracted, too," Reagan said. "You were busy taking care of me when I had mine."

There was a pause. Then Sara said, "So all of this has happened before. The First. That's how you knew, Mom, about those Harbinger guys."

Buffy nodded.

"So what happened?" Reagan asked. "You said she and Daddy got into some stuff . . .?"

"She haunted Angel," Buffy elaborated. "She came to him as people he'd killed, hung around him for days, whispering to him about how he was bad, how he was evil. She tried to convince him to kill me." She paused for a moment, eyes clouded with thought. "He came very close. But he didn't. Instead, when he realized he wasn't safe around me, he tried to kill himself."

Reagan's eyes widened. Sara, however, looked skeptical. "But the First didn't kill him?"

Buffy shook her head. "No. He tried to commit suicide."

"But you saved him," Xander said. "You got there in time."

Buffy shook her head. "No. I got there late. The Powers saved him."

Reagan creased her brow. "The Powers? How?"

Buffy sighed, looking tired. "It's not really important right now, baby. I'll tell you later, okay, when I'm feeling a little stronger."

Reagan nodded halfheartedly. "Yes, ma'am."

"But the First didn't kill him," Sara insisted.

"No," her mother agreed. 

"But it didn't actually want him dead," Wesley added. "Its target was Buffy."

Sara took a deep breath. "So why didn't it just kill her? Why didn't it just kill her this time? It's after the Slayers, isn't it? Why does it keep killing him?"

Giles spoke slowly. "Because it can't touch you." 

"Why not?"

"Well, for one, you're Slayers. You are the chosen warriors of the Powers. That's heavy magic working there, choosing you . . . and, ultimately, protecting you. It would be hard for the First to destroy something so charmed." 

"But Dad was a Champion, too," Reagan argued.

Giles continued. "Yes, but he was also a vampire, once upon a time. He wasn't . . . pure."

"Your father is very unique," Wesley continued. "First a vampire with a soul, and then a vampire made human . . . that's unheard of."

"And things like that don't happen every day for a reason," Reagan guessed, working things out slowly. "It . . . it made him vulnerable, didn't it? To the First?"

Wesley nodded. "The fact that your father was so magically . . . fragile—" Sara gave him a confused look, so he elaborated. "—and by that, I refer to weaknesses left in him on a transcendental level by things like having his soul removed, by becoming human . . ."

"All of that very well may have aided the First," Giles finished. "It might have made him easier to control."

Sara looked confused. "So, what? That's the only reason he got nabbed, cuz he's transcendentally weird?"

Giles shook his head. "No. It certainly may be a factor, but there are other reasons he was chosen. Immediately, he's always been susceptible to the First's influence because of his personality and his experiences; he let her haunt him because he felt guilty, and he accepted the things that it said without worry because he was used to dealing with demons; he didn't count it as evil right away just because it wasn't human."

"And the reason he was chosen as the messenger, so to speak," Wesley picked up, "is because of his proximity to you."

The three Slayers traded glances.

"The First's target seems to be the Slayers," he went on. "And Angel was perhaps the closest person to all of you."

"The fact that he was easily conned was just a special bonus," Cordelia said bitterly.

Reagan weighed all of this in her head.

"Okay," she said slowly. "Lemme get this straight. So the First knows that she'll be able to use Daddy, because she used him before to great success, right?" 

The Watchers nodded.

"And since he's so close to all three of us, it's a good bet, because she'll be able to kill all of us all at once, right? And that way, she doesn't have to use too much energy."

They nodded again.

"And energy is a big thing with the First, I'm guessing," Sara added. "That's why she waited so long in between tries, why she's not around causing trouble all the time?"

"As far as we can tell, yes," Giles answered. "The literature on the First is . . . not generous."

"Okay, I get that," Reagan said. "But I'm still having trouble understanding how she _killed_ Daddy. Did she wait for him to get sick, so he'd be weak and easier to get at, or . . . ?"

Wesley shook his head and said measurably, "I don't think that it waited. I think, perhaps, that it made him that way."

Reagan creased her brow. "What do you mean? She couldn't give him cancer. Tricking his mind, yeah, okay, I'll buy that, but she couldn't mess with his body. She's non-corporeal." 

"I've been thinking," Wesley said in a tone that Reagan always thought of as his I've-Been-Thinking voice, "that perhaps Angel's susceptibility to the First went so deep as to be subconscious."

Sara crossed her arms over her chest. "Meaning?"

"Meaning that perhaps if it made a suggestion to him on a biological level, his body would naturally assume to follow it."

Buffy shook her head. "No. That's stupid."

He raised his hands, palms out, in self-defense. "Just think about it for a moment." When the disbelief didn't leave Buffy's face, he continued. "Let me give an example." Buffy crossed her arms, too. "When . . . say you and Angel are in bed together." She nodded numbly, one eyebrow raised. "Say he's asleep, completely, and you're awake beside him." Her mouth was starting to purse, but she nodded. "If you touch him . . . say you stroke his face, or kiss him. What does he do?"

Buffy shrugged. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

She looked irritated as she replied. "I don't know. He'd . . . respond, I guess. If I touched him, he'd arch into my touch; if I kissed him, he'd kiss me back."

"Even in his sleep?" 

She shrugged. "Sure."

Wesley smiled triumphantly, but he was the only one taking this as a success. When he realized that, his smile faltered somewhat and he continued in a slightly more anxious tone, "See, he responds to you that way because it's an automatic reaction. He's been conditioned to arch when you touch him; he knows that the proper response when you kiss him is to kiss you back. And he knows it on a subconscious level; see, he'll even do it in his sleep."

Sara was looking irritated, clearly unimpressed. "But isn't that _everybody's_ immediate response? If you touched anyone in their sleep, wouldn't they act the same way?"

Buffy, however, did not share her daughter's annoyance. Quite the contrary; she was looking quiet and away, her eyes unfocused from the rest of the group as she worked through a personal puzzle.

"No," she said softly. "No, they wouldn't. Even Angel, he wouldn't. I . . ." She brought her eyes up, some light of comprehension brighting them. "After he came back from Hell, he'd recoil if I touched him in his sleep. He'd jerk back, away from me. He'd even growl at me, sometimes." 

Wesley was looking triumphant again. "See? He'd been conditioned _differently_ then. And since you've been married, he's come to expect different things, and he's learned different reactions. Just on a subconscious level."

Reagan spoke up. "So . . . what? You're saying that he was so used to believing the First on a conscious level that his subconscious level just took it for granted?"

Wesley nodded.

"But . . . the First hadn't haunted him in years. Wouldn't he unlearn that behavior?"

"Apparently not," Cordelia said dully. "Since he believed her enough to let her kill him."

Buffy flinched and looked away for a moment.

"I don't understand," Sara said, voice taking on a bite of impatience. "That doesn't make any sense. Even if he _was_ that susceptible to the First, how'd she give him _cancer_? You don't just walk up to somebody and say, 'You have cancer now,' and they're suddenly—"

"Cancer isn't difficult to start," Willow interrupted gently. "I mean, on a biological level, cancer starts very simply. A carcinogen causes mutation of a cell's DNA, a mutation that gets rid of the cell's signal to stop multiplying after mitosis. The cell multiplies, and passes this flaw onto other cells . . . so you have this domino effect of cells just reproducing out of control. And the cells don't have anywhere to go, since they're not supposed to be there . . . it's like over-population. Only instead of people dying off through natural selection like what happens when a species overpopulates, your cells bunch up and form tumors. Then they take over the space around them, healthy tissue as it dies—it spreads."

"So if the First could just suggest a tiny mutation to one of Angel's cells," Wesley continued. "It could very easily plant a tumor there."

Sara was looking at him with a drawn face. "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Buffy shot her a look, but she didn't apologize; she kept on with her angry disbelief. "Why would she go through all that trouble if she could just walk up to him and say, 'You're dead,' and he'd believe it?"

The adults quieted simultaneously, their eyes wandering to the floor or settling nervously on Buffy. After a moment, the tiny Slayer wet her lips, spoke slowly.

"The cancer wasn't to weaken Angel," she said softly. "It was to weaken us." She raked her hands through her hair. "We were all . . . so shaken by his being sick, that we didn't pay attention to what was happening on the sidelines. Cordelia got a Vision the day after he fell at school; we never checked it out because we were at the hospital taking care of him." She sighed. "And who knows how many hundreds of other things we missed."

The twins lowered their eyes, ashamed; Buffy shook her head and gently touched their faces, bringing their eyes back up. "No. It's nothing we should regret, not really. It's human nature; it's goodness. We took care of the person we loved . . ." Her face turned bitter. "And it cost us."

"Well, she knew that we'd act the way we did," Xander said. "I mean . . . she played us just right."

Willow and Cordelia nodded silently.

"The First knows human nature very well," Wesley started; he trailed off, myopic eyes catching on the way Cordelia's mouth was twitching at the corner as she fought against tears.

"So is that it?" Sara asked after a long silence. "The First suggests to Dad's body that it has this cancer mutation. His body accordingly gets cancer, and we get weak. Then it kills him, and we get weaker."

"And then she cons Michael into doing that blood sacrifice thingie," Reagan continued. "And made Daddy all . . . not dead."

Wesley jumped in. "And then it infuses Angel's body with its essence—"

"—And walks him around like a fucking puppet," Cordelia finished bitterly.

"But it didn't make him Angelus," Buffy said wearily. "It couldn't."

"Yeah," Sara added. "At this point in your theory, he's just . . . you know, Dad-Shell all filled with evil."

"The First may not truly be able to create Angelus," Giles started slowly. "But the First certainly has realm over demons. It shouldn't have been terribly difficult for her to invite Angelus's demon back into the body it called home for two hundred years."

"On the contrary," continued Wesley. "It was probably easy; with as many times as Angel won and lost his soul, there was probably a large transcendental hole for it to come into."

"And since Angel died, it doesn't have a soul to contend with, so it could take control of the body."

"But you said he wasn't really a vampire," Cordelia interrupted irritably.

"He's not," Wesley said. "The First cannot just manifest a vampire. She used the ingredients at her disposal to create a kind of pseudo-vampire version of Angelus."

"But he vamped. He fed from Reagan."

"He's very nearly a vampire. But he's just short . . . even if it's as much as a magical sunburn on him from the First's dealings with him." 

Buffy blinked a few times. "Huh?"

"He is controlled by the First. Are we agreed on that point?"

The collected party nodded in a way that suggested that they were not entirely agreed on that point.

"Let's say that this magical control on him . . . it leaves a mark, just on a magic level."

Willow spoke up. "Oh, like a little signature on his aura, right?" No one else was much colored with comprehension. "Like, remember, Buffy, when you and Faith switched bodies, and Tara could tell it wasn't you cuz of weird static in your aura?" 

Sara wrinkled her brow. "You and Aunt Faith switched—" 

Buffy hushed her and brought her attention back to Willow. "Yeah. So what?"

"Well," Willow replied, "It's like that. See, everything that happens to you magically is imprinted on your aura, right? Like, Angel had one from crossing dimensions when he went to Hell. And now Angelus has one because of this whole thing with the First. Only . . . only this one is much bigger, because it's tampered with the magic that makes him a vampire." 

"So he's just a little off?" Cordelia asked, starting to look less tired. "I mean, he's a vampire, only . . . a little bit not? Like an impersonation?"

"Like the difference between sugar and Sweet and Low?" Xander quipped helpfully. 

Wesley did not look as though he appreciated this analogy, but didn't say anything. Instead, he tried to respond to his wife's queries. "Yes. And that explains why he didn't have to be invited into the house. The magical signature he'd normally have as a vampire has been altered; it doesn't read the same, so not all the same magics apply."

"This same rule may very well hold through to other aspects of the vampire," Giles added.

"Like what?" Buffy asked.

Giles thought for a moment. "Mirrors, perhaps. Or crosses. Those things may no longer interpret him the same; thus, he may interact with them differently."

"Meaning he might reflect?" Sara asked.

"And that he might not burn," Reagan said, sounding a little bit defeated.

Giles nodded. "Correct. Of course, we don't know the extent of all this; you'll find out, I'm sure, the next time you face him." 

Reagan looked pained. "Goody. Something to look forward to."


	11. Dancing Lessons

**Part Eleven – Dancing Lessons**

**Sunday, January 7th, 2018  
Reagan Gryphon's Bedroom**

**overture:** _n._ an instrumental musical composition written as an introduction to an opera, ballet, oratorio, musical, or play.

She woke to find Darla sitting quietly at the end of her bed. She looked like she was wearing a communion dress; all Reagan could see beyond her blonde hair and dark eyes was tangled yards of white lace, hugging her curves and falling over her face and hair in a veil.

"Darla."

She turned her dark eyes on her. She didn't say anything, just watched her for a while. Her mouth was hidden by spider webs of tulle; she looked silent, frightening, just those dark eyes and her pale little girl hands.

Reagan got up on her hands and knees, felt the blankets slip away, exposing her skin to the cool night air and prickling her suddenly.

"Darla," she said huskily, trying to fight back tears. "Why is this happening? I don't understand."

"I told you that everything was going to be set right again," Darla drawled softly. She lowered her eyes to her lap; Reagan followed suit and saw a twist of pale rosary beads winding their way up Darla's arms, tangling around her hands as Darla performed the inverse, rolling the beads in her fingers. A twisting, horrible Ouroborous. Reagan felt sick.

"But . . . this isn't right!" she insisted, forcing her eyes back to Darla's face, her curious dark eyes. "Things don't happen this way!"

Darla slanted a harsh glance at her. "Is that what you're concerned with? The natural order of things? Or do you just want your daddy back?"

Reagan opened her mouth to reply but found she couldn't, her voice arrested in her throat.

"Let me explain some things too you, darling," she said coldly, her voice hard and angry. "The natural order of things _prescribes_ this. The natural order of things was destroyed when a vampire was made human." She spit the words, but then settled herself in order to watch Reagan's reaction.

"All of this is just the universe righting itself," she concluded, voice softer. Less anger.

Reagan whimpered. "I don't understand."

Darla drew in a sharp breath. "Reagan . . ."

"What about what he did to you?"

Darla stopped, looked at her oddly. "What?"

"I saw him," Reagan said. "I had a dream, where you cheated on him and he . . . he used a knife on you. I saw that."

Darla's face went taut.

"You had a dream," she repeated softly, her eyes squeezing at the corners but looking far off.

"Is this like a vengeance gig for you, or what?"

Darla looked down at her lap. "No." She righted herself. "This is bigger than me, bigger than you, you stupid girl."

"So why? Why come here and tell me that he's going to die, huh? Why?"

Darla smiled sweetly. "I'm only the messenger, sweetheart."

Reagan laughed bitterly. "That's it? You just come here and tell me these things for no reason?" Darla was silent and unmoving in the face of Reagan's angry voice. "Who are you working for? The First, is that it?"

Darla's eyes widened slightly in shock. "What—"

"Are you one of her Harbingers, or . . . or what? Why would you—" She stopped suddenly. "No," she whispered. "No." She shook her head, disbelieving, angry with herself. "You're her, aren't you? The First."

Darla's gaze was stony, her tiny mouth set tight.

"Why are you here? Why come to me?"

Darla's eyes focused off in the distance for a moment again. Then she sighed and turned her attentions back to Reagan.

"I thought I should warn you," she said softly. "This isn't—"

Reagan shook her head, smiling bitterly. "No. No. I know all about you. This is your deal. You're calling all the shots."

Darla sneered.

"Fine," she snapped. "Fine."

She stood, the veil falling away from her, baring her moonstone skin to the pale light coming in the windows.

"You're a smart girl, aren't you, Reagan? Read up on me, have you? You know all about me, isn't that right?"

Before Reagan could reply, Darla started to slip inward. Her skin tanned; the rosary fell from around her arms as they thinned. The communion dress darkened and tightened around her body, which was changing its configuration of muscles and curves like watching the full cycle of the moon in one instant. Her mouth plumped and her hair shortened and darkened; her cheeks tightened on different cheekbones as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Reagan's jaw dropped as her mother shook the pale rosary beads from where they'd pooled around her wrist. They fell to the ground with a series of silky, quiet notes; Buffy watched them fall and then raised her black eyes to Reagan.

"Did you know this?" she asked caustically, taking a step toward the young Slayer.

Reagan gasped and inched back, but managed to shut her mouth. Buffy smiled wryly, the First's horrid dark eyes running all over her as she her back hit the wall.

"Boo!" she spit, and laughed when Reagan jumped.

The girl shook her head. "No, you can't—"

"Listen here, child," Buffy said harshly, a curious taut coming to her jaw. "I can do anything I like. I am the First Evil, little girl. I am the thing the darkness fears. I am the ultimate Big Bad. You've heard, 'Every reaction has an equal but opposite reaction?' I am the reaction to the Powers That Be. I am the other side of God. Do not propose to tell me what I can and cannot do."

Reagan opened her mouth to reply. The First growled.

"I'm not done speaking yet," she snarled, and Reagan closed her mouth on automatic, whimpering slightly.

"That's better," she said testily, and continued with her little speech. "I came to you because I wanted to make it easy for you."

"You want to kill me," Reagan said miserably.

Buffy smiled. "Yes, very good, Slayer. But I wanted to do it nicely. Really, I did." Her mouth tightened. "But you fucked that up. Playtime is over, Reagan. You should have drowned yourself; you'll have wished you were dead a hundred times by the time I kill you."

She took a step back from the bed and smiled sweetly.

"Sweet dreams, Reagan. I look forward to meeting with you again."

And in a split second, she had disappeared into the inky darkness of the shadows in her room, leaving Reagan wide-eyed and petrified against the wall, her heart beating in her chest like it wanted out.

**Sunday, January 7th, 2018  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

leçon: _n._ French for "lesson," the carefully graded sequence of exercises dancers undergo throughout their careers in order to continue learning and to maintain technical proficiency.

"Mom? Mommy . . ."

Buffy's eyes opened reluctantly to take in the pale, frightened face of her daughter. Drowsily, she sat up, cupped the girl's anxious face in her hand.

"What's the matter, baby?" she mumbled. "Have a bad dream?"

"More like a bad reality."

Buffy ran her hands over her face, trying to work the sleep out of her flesh. "What do you mean?"

"I'm kind of being haunted."

"What?" She was feeling much more awake now, and her muscles tensed in preparation to leap from her bed and onto the nearest demon.

"The First just made a special guest appearance in my bedroom."

"A bad dream," Buffy repeated dully.

"No."

"Honey, are you sure—"

The girl set her mouth. "I'm positive."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I mean . . . I'm not fine. But I'm not hurt."

Buffy nodded. "Right. What did she want?"

"She was kinda just blowing bad guy smoke."

"Hmm?"

"You know, I'll wish I'd died a hundred times by the time she finally kills me . . ."

"Oh. That's not very helpful." She brooded for a moment. "She just appeared to you? All of a sudden? How'd you know it was her?"

Reagan looked away guiltily. "Well . . . I've seen her before. But I thought she was a white hat. You know, and an actual person instead of some non-corporeal evil powerhouse."

"What do you mean, you've seen her before?"

"She came to me before. Or . . . I ran into her. Or something."

"Before when?"

The girl lowered her eyes. "Before Daddy died. Just after he got sick. She told me about . . . that he—"

"Told you _what_?" Buffy asked impatiently.

"That he was a vampire. That he had been."

Buffy's eyes widened.

"And that . . . that he was going to be punished."

Her jaw clenched. "And you didn't _tell_ anyone?"

The girl looked close to tears. "I forgot! So much was going on, by the time I had dealt with what she was saying, so much other stuff had happened that I'd really forgotten about it."

Buffy sighed. "And tonight—"

"Jogged my memory," she said miserably.

Buffy was looking despondently at her lap. After a moment, she composed herself and said slowly, "Well, she can't hurt you. At least, not immediately; she's not corporeal. We'll call Giles and see what he thinks we should do."

She scooted out of bed and to the phone. She picked up the receiver; it fell to pieces in her hand. She sighed and followed the telephone cord to the wall; it wasn't plugged in, anyhow.

"I'll be right back," she said in an exhausted kind of voice. "You stay here. Yell if you need me."

Reagan waited in a nervous bundle in her parents' bed for a few immeasurably long moments while Buffy used a phone that hadn't been smashed in a fit of Slayer strength. After a few moments, her mother's silhouette reappeared in the doorway, carrying the cordless from the kitchen downstairs.

"Giles says—"

Reagan remembered the First's foray into that terrifying visage, so she interrupted hurriedly, "Touch me."

Buffy wrinkled her brow. "What?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "Please."

Confused, Buffy walked forward and gently laid her hand on top of Reagan's. The girl felt the warm, real weight on the back of her hand and almost cried for relief.

"Sorry," she gasped. "What did Giles say?"

Still looking a little confused, Buffy set the phone on her bedside table and sat next to her daughter on the bed. "That it can wait till morning; there's nothing, really, that we can do, and it'd be stupid to wake the whole house for it. Everyone needs their rest." Her face darkened. "There's a battle ahead." The darkness passed, and she looked tenderly upon her child. "You should get some sleep; you're welcome to sleep here with me if you don't go back to your room."

Reagan nodded silently and maneuvered under the blankets; Buffy kissed her goodnight before getting back under hers.

"There's really no use worrying about any of this tonight, baby," she yawned. "We'll take care of it in the morning."

Reagan fully intended to reply, but she was asleep before the words could pass her lips.

**Sunday, January 7th, 2018  
the Gryphons' Home**

**grand battement en cloche:** _n._ a "kick" in which the working leg, which is raised as high as possible, swings continually back and forth as the body is held erect, creating a "bell" or "pendulum" effect.

Buffy, exhausted but determined, hadn't even bothered to shower before getting up to make her children breakfast. She'd gotten dressed, pulled her hair back into a less-than neat ponytail, and then walked wearily down the stairs, pleading the fifth regarding the existence of things like makeup and joy. It had been a very, very long time since she'd been so consumed by the fight, and she'd forgotten how it felt to feel so tired all the time, to walk through her life with absolutely no regard for herself. But for a long time now, she'd been a mother before everything else, so – goddamn it – her children were going to be fed and dressed and well adjusted. She got out eggs and butter and started making French toast, wondering vaguely what day it was, and if school was back in session yet.

"I am a horrible mother," she sighed.

"I don't think so," said Eve delicately, coming up from behind her.

Buffy smiled sadly. "I don't even know if you guys are supposed to be in school today."

"That makes you a bad truancy officer," Eve suggested, snatching slabs of thick, golden bread onto her plate as soon as her mother lifted them from the pan.

Buffy smiled. "You're right. I'm not a bad mother, I'm just . . . a bit out of it lately."

She kissed Eve on the forehead as the girl headed for the table.

"So are you?" Buffy asked after a long moment of silence.

"Huh?" Eve asked, mouth full of syrupy goodness.

Buffy nudged a browning piece of toast with her spatula. It made a pleasant sizzling noise.

"Supposed to be in school today," she elucidated.

"It's Sunday," Eve said.

"Oh, good."

"But, um . . ." Eve fiddled with her French toast. "We've missed a few days."

Buffy looked over at her daughter. "What? How many?"

"Four," she said quietly.

Buffy sighed, agitated.

"That's great," she snapped. "Is the school going to call me? Are we going to be in trouble for this?"

"A lot of stuff's been going on," Eve muttered defensively.

Buffy took a deep breath. Calmed. She wasn't really angry, she wasn't . . . well, not with Eve, anyway. With herself, with Angelus, sure. But not with Eve.

"I know, baby," she said. The French toast started to smoke, so she turned back to it. "But . . . look, honey. It's the last semester of your senior year. Don't you want to be at school?"

She shrugged. "It's not that important. I mean, they're mostly dumb classes anyway, and . . . you need me here."

Buffy's lips pursed. She felt like she was going to cry.

Slowly, she said, "I promised myself, when I learned I was pregnant with the twins . . . I promised myself that my children wouldn't have to skip school to . . ." She stopped, frustrated that things weren't coming out as clearly as they were inside her head. "Look. When I was in high school, I had a lot of evil to fight and, well, my life wasn't exactly set up so that it was easy for me to do it. I cut a lot of classes, I missed a lot of teenager stuff . . . I couldn't be a cheerleader, I didn't get to go to any basketball games, I even missed Picture Day, so there was no picture of me in my senior yearbook. Not one." She gazed intently at the stovetop, unaware of her daughter's worried eyes on her. "But when I became a mother . . . I made a promise to myself that that would never happen to any of you. I mean, I know it's not always fun being in this family, being a part of . . . a part of the good fight, but your father and I tried our best to give you a normal life, and I think that, for the most part, we've done a really good job."

"We have a great life," Eve said weakly.

Buffy turned briefly to favor her with a thin smile. "I'm glad you think that, baby. I'm glad you're happy." She paused. "But my point is: if all that breaks down now, if everything we worked so hard for . . . we can't let this fall apart. I know, life is horrible right now. This is a really big evil, and it's really hard to deal with. But I don't want it to stop you from living your life."

"Yes, ma'am," Eve murmured.

"What's going on?"

Buffy turned. Sara was standing in the doorway, looking confused.

"Mom's making us go to school tomorrow," Eve summarized.

"But Mom—"

"It sounded a lot better when I said it," Buffy muttered darkly. "And it's for your own good," she said to Sara, jabbing the air with her spatula for emphasis.

"And we'll thank you when we're older," Sara guessed, rolling her eyes and coming to the counter to get a plate.

Buffy slid some French toast onto Sara's plate. "Damn right you will."

Reagan materialized in the doorway, wearing her pajamas and dark, tired eyes.

"Mom's making us go to school tomorrow," Sara informed her as she sidled past her to join Eve at the table. "And there's French toast."

"The First came to me last night," Reagan replied, tone dead even.

Eve and Sara started. "What?" they asked simultaneously.

"She came to me. She was big with the warnings."

"Have some breakfast," Buffy recommended calmly.

Sara's eyes shot to her mother. "You're not worried about this?"

Buffy shrugged. "Old news, baby. Wes and Giles are already hot on the trail. Or . . . something. Something with books."

"We're not going into battle or anything? That thing was in our I _house_ /I ."

"A) We cannot go into battle against something we cannot touch, and B) That thing has been in our house more times than you know. Would you like some orange juice?"

Sara frowned. "You're not worrying enough about this."

Buffy brought her some juice.

"I think I'm worrying just enough about this," she replied evenly as she set the glass on the table in front of her daughter. "It's not time to worry yet; it's not time to fight yet, and it won't do us any good to waste precious time fretting. She's made her play; she won't strike again for a while now."

"How can you be so sure? She was warning Reagan last night—"

"I can be sure of that because her biggest asset is badly wounded and regrouping. He's not going to heal or regroup very well if he's attacking us, will he?"

Sara stabbed a piece of her toast angrily. "So that's it? We just bide our time—"

"—while they're biding theirs," Buffy finished for her. "Correct. But we fill that bide time with all sorts of helpful planning and convalescence, and hopefully we're ready for them when they come back swinging."

"Which could be at any moment," Sara muttered darkly.

"True," Buffy agreed. "But don't worry. We have a little while. Really."

**Monday, January 8th, 2018  
Buffy Gryphon's Bedroom**

**oratorio:** _n._ a musical composition for voices and orchestra which tells a sacred story without costumes, scenery, or dramatic action.

_"I'm worried about the kids." _

_He was sitting behind the desk in his study, leaning back relaxed in the plush leather chair. He was looking at her like looking through her._

_She fidgeted, standing awkwardly in front of his desk like one of their children getting a lecture. "I'm sending them to school tomorrow."_

_He sighed and righted himself into a stricter position, the chair making soft noises as it shifted on its stand. _

"_That's not even close to what I'm talking about," he said severely, and she closed her arms around herself, feeling more and more chastised. _

"_I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered morosely. "I don't know what to do." _

"_This is a new age," he said softly, rising from his chair and walking around the desk, settling on the front edge, inches from her. "The old rules don't apply." _

"_What about history—"_

"_History always lays the groundwork," he said evenly. "But evolution is an inevitable part of the human condition; you can't play this the same as you might have before." _

"_I don't understand."_

_He sighed and took her hands in his. "Don't pull any punches, baby." _

"_I never do." She paused. "I still don't understand."_

_He lowered his eyes to their union. Palm to palm, fingers curled around fingers, rings touching, shining against each other. _

"_Before you lose everything," he said softly. "You will lose the thing most precious to you." _

_He let go of her hands and slipped down to his feet, started away from her. As he turned, his Claddagh ring slipped from his finger, past the worthless grasp of hers, and to the ground. She watched it wordlessly; the motion was so small, but she swore the whole earth shook as the tiny shine of silver hit the floor._

"_Don't pull any punches, baby," he said again._

_She couldn't bring her eyes to him, too focused on the hole in the world._

**Monday, January 8th, 2018  
The Gryphons' Home**

**révérence:** _n._ a bow or curtsey; also, the term used to describe the last exercise of a class.

Sara skipped cheerleading practice to drive home with Eve. Reagan wavered briefly when Sara stopped in front of her locker to invite her to walk home with them – something she hadn't done since seventh grade – but then Chris had come up from behind her, curled his arm around her waist, and sweet-talked her into going to rehearse with the band, and she blushed and stuttered quietly that no, thank you, she would see her at home in an hour or two.

Sara, feeling strangely boisterous, was only amused by her twin's reaction, and made a teasing remark to further Reagan's fluster before following Eve to the parking lot.

"How was your day, Eve?"

Her sister shrugged. "Okay. Not like . . . it wasn't how I'd expected."

"I expected it to be horrible," Sara deadpanned.

Eve laughed. "Yeah. Me too."

But it hadn't been. Really not. Sara didn't know what it was, if the staff had imposed a gag order re: her father's death while they'd been playing truant, but no one had asked questions; a few people told her gently that they were sorry, but beyond that, no one mentioned a thing.

Which was good, because the only thing worse than thinking about her father's death was thinking about Angelus, and the two were now very much linked in her head.

A little knot twisted in her stomach when she realized how strange a thing that was; she hadn't even _met_ Angelus. She hadn't even seen him; she'd slept through his attack on the house, and he was lying low, neither returning nor popping up on patrols. Which was perfectly fine with her, even if it had the unfortunate side effect of her imagining this monster that had her mother and sister so frightened as just her father running around with fangs and a cape. But honestly. It was too hard to think of the kind, soft-spoken man she'd known her whole life as something dead and evil.

They were mostly quiet on the way home, only chatting inanely about classes and Stephan and Annie. Once home, Eve went upstairs to watch television with Michael – still feeling under the weather, he'd been at home in bed all day – and Sara wandered into her parents' bedroom to find her mother sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading demonology books.

"Did you go to work today?" Sara asked gently, settling deferentially at the foot of the bed.

Buffy didn't look up to answer her, just raised her head a bit absently in a sort of nod to her presence.

"No. I still have a week on my leave."

"Leave?"

"I, um, took a leave of absence when Angel got sick."

"Oh." Sara craned her neck to get a look at what her mother was reading. Nothing interesting, just a mountain of tiny text. "Find anything interesting?"

"Mmm, no."

Sara looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

"I think I'm going to go to the Magick Shop to train for a while," she stiltedly.

Buffy raised her eyes, finally.

"Be careful," she said softly.

"Training?"

She was quiet for a moment. "Just . . . in general, I guess. There's some scary stuff out there, Sara. Really big bad."

"Yes, ma'am, I know."

Buffy's attention wavered, her eyes flickering back over the eternity of miniscule words.

"I'll probably just go straight from training to patrolling; a couple quick sweeps. I'll get Giles to get me supper."

"Be careful," Buffy repeated, bringing her eyes up again, settling her attention on Sara again.

"I will."

"And don't bug Giles," she added, as Sara rose to leave. "If he's too busy to feed you, don't bother him; just come home, and I'll order a pizza or something, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She started towards the door; a few steps away and she changed her mind, turned quickly back and kissed her mother on the cheek.

Buffy's eyes were worried, solely concentrated on Sara again.

"Be careful."

**Monday, January 8th, 2018  
Moore Cemetery **

**pas de deux:** _n._ a dance for two.

It was dark, too damn hot to be January, and Sara felt the familiar futility that she always referred to as "Elmer Fudd Syndrome" coursing through her. Walking through the forest blind, pointing her gun at things . . . "Shh! I'm huntin' vampiwes."

Two sweeps and nothing. Briefly, she thought dumbly that maybe the Hellmouth was closed for business. This pie in the sky was almost immediately quashed by the ever-growing itch for a fight.

Somewhere, a tiny voice whispered, "There's no one out tonight. Go home. Relax."

This, too, was silenced by her hard-on for the kill. Frustrated, she tightened her grip on her stake and circled around again, entering Moore Cemetery for the third time that night.

Aimlessly – or, rather, consumed with one rather definite aim – she stepped over low markers, sidled around the taller stones.

Halfway through, she walked past the Moore mausoleum and slowed her gait. The mausoleum had been constructed long before even her mother had dusted vamps in the cemetery, only a few years after the cemetery's construction in the late nineteenth century. The gorgeous, elaborate rose hedge that surrounded it was planted the year of Buffy's arrival on the Hellmouth, after the last Moore was turned by the Master's minions and later efficiently turned to talcum powder by the new player in town.

The mausoleum itself was fairly ordinary, and small enough that it was rarely inhabited by the undead. The hedge, however, was a formidable structure; hardy, heavily-thorned roses intertwined in elaborate Celtic knots; gorgeous, lush blossoms of deepest red flowered all over. The structure was at least twice Sara's height and several times as thick as she was; the result was a beautiful maze so dense and tangled that it was almost an attraction for vampires. Lure someone in, it was not likely they'd be coming out if the monster were the least bit capable. Sara and Reagan had found several bodies there, and they always made sure to check it.

Hopeful but cautious, Sara half-heartedly checked inside the mausoleum – empty, cobwebbed – and then slipped between stone and roses. She walked carefully, ever vigilant; aching for a good rumble or not, she wasn't going to be foolish with her life. She had had many, many lectures on the matter of the Moore roses alone, and she remembered every word as she walked through it.

Dark, dark . . . night vision. Definitely could use some night vision right about now. Vampires had it; you'd think it would come with the whole Slayer package. Roses and thorns and twists of brambles cast ugly, frightening shadows amidst the world of black. It was like the jungle, always moving. Shifting, changing. Staring at you with yellow eyes.

"Well hey there," Sara said softly, catching a shine of light glazing demon eyes. "Bit late for a walk."

"'Bout to say the same to you," the vampire purred, completely smooth-voiced. "Isn't it past your curfew?"

She froze. "You."

Angelus was grinning as he stepped out of the shadows.

"You ought to have a bit more respect for your old man, baby." He frowned. "You don't seem surprised to see me. I suppose Buffy's been rallying the troops?"

He sneered the same color that edged his voice. Bitter limes. Sara frowned.

"She told us about what happened," she said cautiously, carefully watching his movements. One of his hands disappeared and she tensed immediately; a moment later, it came back into view, a cigarette between the paper pale fingers. She forced herself to relax while he went through the motions of lighting and taking a first drag.

"How's your sister?"

"She's fine," she said between clenched teeth, trying hard to control her tone.

There was no expression on his face. "Healed quickly, did she?" He rolled his eyes. "Slayers."

"It wasn't very deep, the bite."

"Just a taste . . ." He smiled wickedly, sharply exhaled a stream of white into the black night sky. "Couldn't help myself. Been too long without the taste of a Slayer in my mouth."

She recoiled a little, disgust all over her face. He noted this with obvious glee.

"So . . . did she like it?"

Sara looked up, shocked. It took her a moment to register the question; after it'd finally filtered to sense, her cheeks burned with rage.

"You—I—"

"Bet she did." He wet his lips suggestively. "Slayers always do." He paused to savor her reaction. "Just ask Buffy sometime."

"What's that—" It dawned on her. "You didn't. She wouldn't have let you."

But he didn't look like he was lying; he was smiling smugly at her, looking – well, evil, but also confident . . . wise. _I know something you don't know . . ._

"Not only would she," he said silkily, almost lightly, "but she _begged_ me to do it."

"No. Liar."

He grinned. "Don't have to, sweetie. The truth's pretty enough."

She hesitated. "Mom . . . she wouldn't." But both her voice and her conviction wavered somewhat.

Angelus laughed.

"Oh, she would," he said, taking another drag. "Mommy Dearest did a lot of depraved things when she was in love with a vampire, sweet pea."

She shook her head again. "No."

His threw the butt of his cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe. They were silent while he performed this ritual, too caught in the tension to move.

"Vampires can smell blood, you know that?" he asked suddenly.

"Of course."

She wasn't sure where he was going with this, and it worried her.

"Menstrual bleeding too, of course." This had never occurred to her. "Especially the males." She blushed slightly. "They can always tell when you . . ."

Angelus's eyes flickered briefly between her legs, and Sara felt her blush darken to crimson.

"It used to drive him crazy," he continued softly. "And she knew, of course. I mean, she figured it out. She used to tease him . . . every time she bled, she'd wear these short little skirts and no panties, just a tampon. Walk around swiveling that plump little bottom of hers, brushing up against him and pretending not to notice . . . drove him crazy. Me, I would have taken a bullwhip to her, maybe fucked her bloody." He grinned. "If you'll excuse the pun." Sara's face tightened with disgust. "But you know him. He just ached and brooded, and took out all his frustrations on himself . . . him and his right hand."

She blushed again. Her parents' sex lives were not foreign to her, but the thought of her father masturbating was deeply unnerving. Even she . . . she wouldn't. She'd never . . . Reagan teased her about it, about being completely virginal and holding sex and even the orgasm as something so sacred, but she didn't let it get to her. It _was_ important, and anyway, Reagan had been touching herself since she'd been Called, and let Chris screw her five whole times, so who was she to talk?

"She did spread for him, though," Angelus purred, suddenly breaking into her reverie. "She parted those pretty legs for him at least once a month. He fed from her while he ate her, girl, and she loved it. . . . The nasty things that came out of that sweet girl's soft little mouth when his demon face was between her thighs—"

"Stop it."

He did stop, but he kept looking at her . . . why was he looking at her like that? Suddenly, a hand flew to her face . . . she was crying. Goddamn it.

"What's wrong, baby?" he crooned, voice low and sympathetic, mocking her. "Can't take the heat, sweetie? Can't take the truth?"

Furious with herself, she focused all of her energy on stopping the flow of tears.

"You always were a lot like Buffy, you know that, sweetheart?"

She looked up suddenly. He'd taken several steps toward her in her distraction; he was now very close, close enough that she could smell him, metal and leather; he was close enough that, had he been human, she could have felt his warmth, heard his breathing.

"I do miss the taste of a Slayer, Sara," Angelus said quietly, looking at her curiously, an emotion she couldn't place written on his face.

She opened her mouth to respond with something that would undoubtedly be flippant and cool, but then she placed the emotion and her heart beat hard with panic. He was looking at her completely conquered by _lust_. Suddenly panicking, she backed a few steps away; he followed her progress, taking relaxed steps to her clumsy backward ones. _Think, Goddamn it, think._ Her mind flew to her mother, the lecture the other night . . . what had she said? Instinct interrupted, told her to fight, but her mother had said . . . she'd said run.

Without thinking any further, Sara spotted an opening and threw her entire body forward into it. Clearly surprised, Angelus didn't respond until she'd gotten herself a good lead; she could hear him behind her, tearing through tendrils of thorns. She didn't stop; she kept pointing herself at clearings in dark jungle of bramble, and rocketing her body through them. Two years on the track team, never mind being a Slayer, left her well conditioned to zoom through this course. Running was something she was good at, something she barely had to think about, and after a moment even the panic was gone, and she began to get her head back . . . in time to panic again.

Maze. This was a fucking maze, and she was lost, and she turned a hard left and found herself completely surrounded; she'd hit a dead end. She tried to decide quickly how to act; she obviously couldn't go back the way she'd come, so she'd have to find some way to conquer the towers of beautiful deathflowers and bloodprick thorns. Before she could think of anything except what not to do, she felt herself go cold. Dread building in her stomach, she slowly turned around to face the one open wall.

She'd been made an island; standing in the opening, framed by the horrible shadows of the suddenly morbid roses was Angelus, looking all ivory and darkness.

"No more running, Sara," he said softly.

He came toward her. In response to every step toward her he took, she took an equal move back. Then all of a sudden, there wasn't any more room to do that; Sara found herself with crisp leaves and soft petals brushing her skin and tangling in her hair. Angelus was close again, just an arm's length away. Panicked, she listened to her instincts. In the darkness, she fumbled for her stake; desperately, she clutched her weapon.

"Shouldn't have let me join the track team," she said, trying for banter, trying for anything that would keep his mind off of what she was doing.

"I like a chase," he said simply, his voice even and very relaxed.

She couldn't think of a witty comeback for that one. All semblance of a distraction gone, she followed her instincts again and lunged forward, stake at ready. Before the wood could penetrate his flesh, or even come within three inches of him, he grabbed her wrist, bent it back; she retaliated by using her free hand to sock him hard in the jaw. A little dazed, he did what came naturally and pushed forward against her, tried to push her away; she pulled back at the same time, and the two of them fell to the ground, Angelus on top of the Slayer. Panicked again, she kicked up wildly; she connected briefly with his shin. However, he still had a hold of her wrist, and as he twisted to get away from her assault on his shin he fell back, bringing her on top of him. Using her position to take control of the fight, she jerked her arm hard; Angelus's hold on her wrist weakened, and she broke free. In a second, they were both on their feet, facing each other off. She tried to run again, go out the opening; he grabbed her from behind, and she parried his advances with a high out-to-in kick to the chest. Stunned, he fell back; she started to run again. She hadn't gotten a yard when she felt a shock of pain throughout her body; before she knew it, Angelus had grabbed her and thrown her to the ground. She struggled to get her feet, faced him off. He was smiling, waiting for her. She ran toward him, one two three punches he ducked. The next connected with his face, and he jerked back momentarily.

Realizing his temporary distraction for the gift it was, Sara decided to stop fighting and run while she had the chance. She turned from him and tried for a jump over the roses, no matter the daunting height and the worrying fact that she didn't know what was on the other side; unfortunately, Angelus was quicker than she'd thought and she was only a few feet off the ground when he grabbed her from the air, his hands curling cruelly around her rib cage and then throwing her to the earth – hard. She was jarred, and her body gasped painfully for air as she struggled to her hands and knees, as she struggled to get back to her feet. Before she could stand, Angelus landed a hard kick to her gut, and she doubled over again, pain spiraling throughout her body. The shock kept her on the ground and flew the stake from her hands; it landed several feet away.

"Enough," Angelus said softly. "It's over."

He walked around her slowly. Out of breath and reeling in pain, she was struggling to get up again when he landed another horrible kick to her side. Shit. Shit. There was a horrible cracking noise, and her body filled with shocks of pain, her head with sudden black. . . . She recovered enough from the shock of her ribs breaking to turn painfully onto her back so that she could see what he was doing, but she moved slowly. Angelus dropped to his knees, straddled her; he grabbed her hands at the wrists and held her arms above her head, wrists together and crossed, with one of his large hands.

Her head was swimming, panicked. Without thinking, she let out one harsh sob.

"Please," she said stupidly, involuntarily. She regretted it immediately; his eyes sparked with interest and triumph.

"Go ahead," he challenged, a smile playing on his lips. "Beg. Improves the taste."

She tried to use her legs to push him off of her, but her struggling only resulted in him pressing more weight down on her. A dark, queasy sensation rolled throughout her with the pain in her side, in her chest. There were broken ribs, she knew it; she'd heard the cracks, and she could feel the pain of broken glass within her. Another nauseating wave of panic shocked through her; she'd never had a broken bone before, and the thought suddenly terrified her.

This fresh terror was erased when she was reminded of the initial horror: Angelus slowly rippled to his demon guise, still smiling. She let out a tiny scream and tried – painful as it was – to struggle out from under him, but it was to no avail. He had her pinned tight, and she had no idea what to do. She had never, not in all of her years of training, been counseled in this. She knew how to get an attacker off of her, yeah, but she had never experienced the pain of having a chest full of shattered glass, and she'd never had to think about what to do when her father was trying to kill her. . . . This complete naivety added to her panic, and her chest moved hard with her frightened breaths; her heart pounded fast as he lowered his face to hers.

"I wonder if you taste like your sister," he whispered against her hair. The tears started, then; quiet, punctuated only with the occasional harsh whine as her panic and the pain in her chest both rose to plateau at the same time.

To her surprise, he didn't bite her. He didn't lower his face to her throat at all; instead, he met her eyes, looked at her for along moment, and then kissed her, full on the mouth. She went rigid immediately, sending spirals of pain throughout her. She'd kissed her father before: short, virginal kisses hello or goodnight. Never like this. Angelus was kissing her softly, slowly; he was moving his cold, hard mouth against hers, sliding his cold tongue into her mouth. She tried to pull away; he used the hand not holding hers to the ground to hold her face still. Nauseated, she bit down; he dug a knee into her side, and the pain of pressure against her broken ribs was enough that she slackened her jaw. She cried harder as he continued to kiss her, completely helpless and increasingly devastated.

After an eternity, he stopped kissing her, relinquished hold of her face. Quickly, and knowing perfectly well what she was doing was stupid considering the circumstances, she turned her face away. Sure, she was losing sight of her opponent; sure, she was baring her throat for a vampire. But it was somehow more horrible to look at him, so she looked away.

"Your mother was a better kisser at your age."

She sobbed quietly, closing her eyes tight, to not look at him more. Like shutting out light would shut him out. She stopped struggling. Maybe, if she pretended this wasn't happening, she'd wake up and it wouldn't be. She lay still beneath him, trying to wish away his hand pinning hers and his legs on either side of her poor body, straddling her . . . his large body hovering just above hers at the waist . . . the way – she knew – he was still looking at her . . .

She had almost convinced herself that he had gone when she felt his lips on her again. Not on hers; instead, she felt kisses being pressed slowly to the curve of her jaw, her exposed throat . . . _Oh, God,_ she though. _Here it comes. _But it didn't come. No bite. The kisses just kept traveling down until the cold stopped right above her heart . . . then, a light touch, cold fingers following the trail. He stopped for a moment above her heart, feeling her pulse, she imagined, and then traveled down further . . . she closed her eyes harder, even as the tears came harder, as he cupped one of her breasts in his free hand, squeezed her softly through her shirt and bra. _This is not happening,_ she chanted to herself. _This is not happening, it can't be happening, God, God Almighty, this cannot be happening . . ._ His lips on her throat again, and she actually wished for the bite. None came. He kissed her throat, and fondled her breasts through her shirt . . . then, cold fingers on the bare skin of her stomach, and up . . . his free hand, his cold dead hand under her shirt, filling with her bra-covered breasts . . . she felt a quick movement and he released the clasp in front, and she felt his cold, hard hand fall over her naked breast.

She snapped her head up, eyes flying open. "No!"

He growled suddenly and looked down at her, slipping back to his human face. "Be quiet, girl."

She jerked hard beneath him, struggling to get away. "No!"

He withdrew his hand and used it to backhand her hard across the face. Shocked, head throbbing with blue and black lights, it took her a minute to recover enough to realize that he hadn't stopped hitting her. He was smacking her, again and again, hard hits, and she felt bursts of warmth under her skin as tiny blood vessels broke and the soft flesh bruised . . . she managed to open her eyes long enough to see him ball his fist, but only seconds later her world went black and light, her head fogged and swimming . . . somewhere, far away, she heard a snap and felt the hot, choking rush of blood over her mouth as her nose broke.

She coughed as the thick, metal liquid gagged her, covered her mouth . . . he was still hitting her. She swallowed foully, cleared her mouth enough to manage, "Stop! Daddy, Daddy, please stop! I'll be good . . . please stop . . ."

To her great surprise and absurd relief, he stopped. The blows stopped, and after a moment she could open her eyes. Slowly, she did, and surveyed him still straddling her, still holding her hands above her head, his free hand blood-covered and hanging limply at his side. He was watching her. He looked furious and predatory, and she felt instantly meek and frightened.

"I'll be good," she whispered again.

"You do that again and you'll be punished," he said, voice husky and low. She'd never heard that voice so angry. Her entire life, all the bad things she'd done, all the time she'd disobeyed or disappointed him, and she had never heard that voice with even a fraction of that rage. "They'll need dental records and a fucking hot glue gun to figure out who you were."

"I'll be good," she promised, her voice taking on a disgusting pleading quality. "I'll be a good girl, Daddy, I promise."

He wasn't listening to her anymore. His face had taken on a kind of vacant look that meant he was possessed with something else; a chill ran through her. That's it, he was going to kill her, he was going to beat her to death because he wasn't even listening to her promises. . . . He bent his head over her again, and she felt a chill chafe her battered face. His tongue. He was licking the blood from her face, lapping up the blood from her bruised skin. Cautiously, not sure if he was watching her or not, she let her eyes fall upon him; he was being gentle, using the same careful motions of a dog or a deer lapping water. Actually, it was exactly that motion. It was a completely animal motion. Sara had been learning about vampires since before she'd learned to walk, but she learned a fundamental truth now, watching Angelus lave the blood from her face: there was no humanity in vampires. The human garb meant nothing. No human emotions, no nothing. This was an animal.

The animal on top of her quietly finished its chore, licking the blood from her face, sucking at the open wounds until they produced more blood. His tongue grazed her lips; she went rigid, and closed her eyes tight. She felt his mouth perform the same task as it had on her wounds; he was sucking gently, bringing blood to the surface. She felt his teeth scrape, breaking the flesh further, sucking fervently like tearing the meat from soft fruit. His tongue in her mouth; he was kissing her now. She wanted to jerk, to try and run away again, but she was too afraid of what he'd do to her, knowing that her deconstruction into a dental records jigsaw puzzle would be done slowly, and that he'd do it to her while she was still alive. So she lay still as he kissed her, pressing his heavy, undead body against hers; she choked back stinging revulsion as his free hand held her jaw, felt her breasts and her legs.

After a long time, she felt his mouth release hers. She dared to open her eyes; he was still close, his face just inches from hers. He was watching her intently; his eyes narrowed a little in interest.

"You're a good girl?" he asked passively, his eyes narrowing a little further. There was a slight lilt to his voice that might have been mocking; Sara couldn't register it. "You're my good girl, are you, Sara?"

This seemed like a very dangerous question. Sara wanted to stall, to think of the right answer, but she could tell by the rigidity of his body against her, the tightness of his thighs by her sides, that he was growing anxious. And when he was anxious, he'd be violent, so she spit out an answer: the immediate answer.

"Yes, Daddy," she whispered.

There was no change in his face, and Sara prayed to God that she'd made the right decision. After a moment, he seemed to relax; his eyes went back to their normal size, and his body lost some of its harsh rigidity.

"You're going to be good for me, are you?"

She felt tears burn at her eyes, at the aching blood-scorched passageway of her sinuses and throat.

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I'll be good."

He looked at her for a long time without moving. Then, slowly, he released her hands and drew up into a full sitting position at her hips. Sara went numb. He'd let go of her hands. She wasn't sure, at first, that this had really happened; she noted a tight pain and a cold rush of new air at her wrists, and checked to make sure that she could see both of his hands . . . there they were, right in front of her, but she still wasn't convinced.

"You're going to be good," he repeated.

Quickly, she nodded. He had both of his hands free now, too, she reminded herself. He could do a lot of damage with two free hands.

"And if you're a good girl," he murmured, his eyes on hers and glinting deadly serious. "Daddy's not going to hurt you. Do you understand that, Sara?"

Her head was swimming. He wasn't going to kill her. He was going to let her go.

"Yes," she managed.

He nodded once, slowly, his eyes still on hers.

"And if you're not . . ."

He narrowed his eyes a little, brought his knees in against her sides. A stab of pain went through her and she yelped. He let up.

"If you're not," he continued, "I'll spend days killing you. Do you understand?"

She nodded slowly. She suddenly did not like where this was going.

"It's your choice," he said softly.

It was a long time before she realized he wanted her to make a decision.

"I'll be good," she stammered, confused. Why would he let her choose whether she wanted to live or die? That was an easy decision. A no-brainer.

But she did want to live. So she said so and then looked up at him nervously, waiting for his reaction to her choice.

"You're going to keep your hands above you head," he instructed quietly, his voice a little husky. He was still looking at her, and it was starting to make her nervous. He hadn't said yet whether or not he was going to kill her. "Do you understand me, girl?"

She nodded quickly. "Yes."

"You're going to keep your hands above your head, and you're going to be very still and very quiet. And if you do that, and you're good, I'll let you live." He looked at her for a long time. "Do you understand?"

"Yes." There. He'd said it. He was going to let her live.

"And?"

He was beginning to grow impatient again. She felt his thighs start to go tight against her sides, compressing in on her fractured ribs, making her world go to red and white lights.

"I'll be good," she whispered, and the lights faded away, and all she could see was Angelus looming patiently above her and the endless expanse of star-dotted night behind him.

Pleased with her answer, Angelus nodded once, then put his hands on her shoulders. His eyes fell from her face to her throat, and immediately panic shot through her, but then she reminded herself that he'd said he wasn't going to kill her. . . . But what proof was that? You can't trust a demon, you can't—Sara forced herself to shut out that voice, and focused instead on the positive. Angelus's word that he wasn't going to kill her certainly wasn't proof, but it was so much better than his promise that he'd spend days doing it. And anyway, if he changed his mind, or went back on his promise, her hands were free. That was the really important thing, wasn't it? Her hands were free, and she could fight her way out. No, that was a lie; with her ribs like that, she couldn't even run away, let alone expect to best him in a fight. But it was kind of a goodwill thing, she reasoned. Since he needed her to trust him, he was showing her that he trusted her enough to have her hands back. All she needed to do was be still and let him feed from her or whatever, and then he would leave her alone. So Sara forced her body to stillness, hands crossed above her head, and put her eyes firmly behind him, on the stars.

Angelus had his hands flat on her shoulders, and he was being very still and very quiet himself. Then, slowly, his hands traveled down; he felt her collarbone, her heartbeat, and then her breasts; she closed her eyes, flinched real hard, preparing for them to settle there, preparing for him to feel her up again, but he didn't. His hands didn't stay there; he lingered for a moment over her broken rib cage, the flat of her stomach . . . his hands disappeared for a moment to someplace beyond her belly button that she couldn't see for shadow; she heard a harsh, unfamiliar metal noise, felt Angelus shift. She was curious as to what he was doing, and confused as to why he was letting her live, but she was more frightened than she was either one of those things, so she lay still, kept her hands above her head, and kept quiet.

There was a soft noise and Angelus shifted again, but he wasn't hurting her, so she lay still and quiet. She wondered vaguely where his hands were, but then she felt them again, on her knees, her thighs . . . he ran his hands over the outside of her thighs a couple times, a gentle movement, and her mind rushed trying to figure out what it was he was doing; was he taking an inventory of her injuries? Trying to figure out if she was hurt? But no, those were things her father would have done, and he certainly wouldn't. . . . She lay still. He wasn't hurting her, and he was going to let her live, so she did just what he'd asked and was a good girl for him. His hands on her knees again, then petting her again, the insides of her thighs this time. . . . What was he doing?

"Good girl, Sara," he said softly, and she took this as an indication that he'd meant what he said and that if she kept it up he wouldn't hurt her anymore, so she took a deep breath and concentrated on being still and quiet.

She felt his hands by her stomach again, under her shirt; she closed her eyes, preparing for him to put his hands on her breasts again. Again, he didn't; he lifted her shirt up a little, and then she felt an odd twist of his hand and

Sara's eyes flew open. Her breathing grew fast, and she had to force herself to be still and quiet. He'd unbuttoned the fly of her jeans, run the zipper down, had his hands between the denim and one of her thighs; she could feel his cold, disgusting hand on her flesh.

She opened her mouth to speak, to ask him what he was doing or to tell him to stop; almost immediately, his dark eyes flashed up to hers, angry.

"Quiet," he said harshly, and there was something so hot in his gaze and so dangerous in his voice that she closed her mouth immediately and lay down more, if it was possible, forcing her shoulders into the soft earth.

Her heart was beating fast, her breath coming quicker and quicker. She kept her mouth closed, bit her tongue to keep it closed . . . if she made a noise, he would kill her, he would spend hours disassembling her. The thought just made her heart beat faster, and she was so possessed with this terror that she almost didn't notice what he was doing until she felt the night dew on her bare legs. She clenched her jaw tight, bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood. He'd slid her jeans down around her knees, and he had his hands on her thighs, and he was still looking at her like he'd kill her if she so much as mewed, and what was he going to _do_?

_Please God,_ she thought, but she didn't know please god what, so she just concentrated on being still and quiet and not being brutally murdered. Angelus slid her panties around her knees almost tenderly, and she swallowed a shout as she felt the night air and the cool, wet grass on her bared parts. She heard another soft noise from Angelus, and he shifted again. . . . She still couldn't see what he was _doing_, it was too dark, but she was almost glad now, because she was almost certain that she really didn't want to know. . . . She felt him lean over her, saw him plant his hands on either side of her head; she looked right up into his face, breathing hard, concentrating hard on not moving a muscle. Angelus was looking down at her unsmiling, an interesting kind of intensity on his face. Or . . . not his face. He was still wearing his human face, looking at her with her father's brown eyes, only on him they were darker somehow, more . . . dead. Was that possible? He leaned down close and she was sure he was going to kiss her again; he didn't. He ran his tongue over her lips, and for a moment she was rushed with a manic confusion over what he was doing. She realized, then, that she was bleeding: there was blood on her mouth from biting her tongue. He licked that clean, then – keeping his face close, so close that she could feel every movement – he brought his mouth close to her ear and whispered, "Good girl, Sara."

Sara broke her promise as she felt him slam into her. She cried out, almost screamed with the pain and revulsion of the final realization of just what he was going to do to her. Angelus didn't seem to mind, though; he'd come back up, and his eyes were on hers again, and his face was calm. He thrust into her with strong, slow strokes, pulling almost all the way out before driving in again. Sara cried out ragged every time he hit home, her breath gone torn with tears and the speed at which she was breathing. She wanted to rage, to tell him not to, but she couldn't find the right muscles to do that; instead she just cried and screamed short, no-syllable words at him.

He didn't punish her for breaking her silence, but he did punish her for breaking the other two rules. She jerked beneath him, brought her hands up from the ground and clawed at his back; he closed one big hand around her throat, crushing her airway.

"Be still, girl," he murmured, his voice easy.

Sara tried to fight, but she couldn't breathe at all, and she was becoming weaker and weaker with every second that the darkness of suffocation seeped around her; she felt like she couldn't control her hands, could barely feel them clawing at Angelus, and – by the looks of things – he could barely even feel her. It was hopeless; she couldn't do anything but wait for the dark to take over. Finally, the fear of death, her will-to-live voice ran harshly through her, and she stilled, obeying Angelus, her hands falling uselessly from the broad expanse of his back.

He took his hand off her throat, and she breathed in a quick, harsh sob.

"Keep your hands above your head," Angelus instructed gently, as though he were reminding her of a missed step in a homework problem. Dumbly, she raised them above her head again, even crossed them delicately at the wrists.

His face was emotionless.

"Good girl," he said softly.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
The Harrises' Home**

**épaulement:** _n._ "shouldering;" a rotation of the shoulders and head, relative to the hips, to add beauty or expressiveness to a pose, step, or movement.

The phone was ringing. Nonsense. The phone couldn't possibly be ringing at this time of night.

Mary made a muffled noise, her face buried in her pillow, and elbowed Xander hard in the side.

"Answer the phone before it wakes up the kids."

Rubbing the sore spot on his ribs, Xander reluctantly turned and picked up the phone. As his hand settled on the vibrating receiver, he registered the time spelled out in glowing neon numbers on his nightstand: 12:54.

"Hello?"

The voice that responded was smooth and hard, an unexpected blade into Xander's barely conscious. "Hi, Xand. It's me."

His muscles went taut, and he fumbled into a sitting position, startling Mary into groggy questions of who the Hell is on the phone and the like.

"Angel."

She sat up now, too. She was looking at him with a confused, worried expression marring her dark features.

"Hey, Xander, hope I'm not calling too late."

"What's up?" He couldn't think of anything to say. Also, he seemed to be sweating all of a sudden.

"Well . . ." The word stretched out long. He was enjoying this. "I'm having a little girl trouble here, Xand, and I thought maybe you could help me out."

Xander switched on the light on his bedside table, and slipped out of his blankets. "Sure, Angel. What's up?"

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Moore Cemetery**

**emboité:** _n._ a close, twirling chain of steps in which, as one leg falls into the step, the other is brought up into passé; from the French for "boxed."

Sara wasn't moving much. She was lying on the ground, on her back, looking up at the night sky and flinching every time he came near to her. She was very pale, especially with the contrast of her dark hair spread beneath her and her dark blood puddling around her and spotting that pretty fair skin of hers. She was still crying, but the sounds were getting quieter. Her breathing, too.

This was one of his favorite parts.

Who was he kidding? They were all his favorite parts.

"You see, Xander," he continued, walking back and forth in front of Sara, a little bit of a skip in his step, "as I said, I'm having a little bit of girl trouble . . ."

"What do you mean?" He sounded scared. Good. Angelus approved of that. "What can I do?"

"Well . . ." Angelus ambled his way close to Sara. She flinched, finally shutting her eyes when he crouched beside her. "You see, Sara went and had herself a little accident."

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
The Harrises' Home**

**failli:** _n._ French for "giving way," a turn that sweeps into bow or fall.

There was a brief pause, during which Xander's heart wrenched itself from his chest and plummeted to his stomach. Then Angelus held the phone up to Sara; Xander heard a soft whimpering noise. She was crying.

_It's okay, sweetheart,_ he thought desperately. _Everything's going to be okay._ But he couldn't say it. All he could do was sit there with his mouth opened, goggling and helpless and listening to the girl weeping.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Moore Cemetery**

**sur place:** _adj._ on the spot.

Angelus took the phone away from Sara, held it back to his ear. He stayed in his little crouch, bouncing slightly on his feet. Christ, the energy was fantastic.

"She had herself a little accident, and I'm afraid—"

"What did you do to her?" Well, look at that. The whelp was trying to be all manly, was he? Angelus chuckled a little to himself. Some things never changed. Buffy's white knight.

"I never kiss and tell, Xander." No machismo from Xander on that. He continued, "Listen, though, Xand, I really think this is something you'd like to see. Cuz frankly, I'm not sure how much time she's got left. The girl bleeds an awful lot."

Xander made a choking noise. "What did you—"

"Here's what I want you to do, Xander. I want you to come down here." He paused, waiting for an argument or a challenge. None came. "And I want you to bring Buffy with you, do you understand? Buffy and the other one. Reagan."

Xander made a little noise. "Where—"

"We're at Moore Cemetery. We're in the roses, Xander. We'll be waiting for you." He paused. "And Sara here doesn't have much time left, so I recommend you hurry."

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
The Gryphons' Home**

**contretemps:** _n._ a contrary step; a step in one direction that quickly changes to the other.

_Angel was sitting beside her, his position relaxed, taking drags off a fag and small sips out of a mug of something hot in one hand._

_It should have been scary. But hey, they did this every year. Death was kind of their job, wasn't it? _

"_All right . . ." Mr. Jameson, their attorney for years now, was pouring over a large stack of papers with an almost bored expression. "Now, if only one of you dies, you'll want the other to inherit everything?"_

_Buffy shifted a little in her seat and looked over at Angel. "Right," she said. "When I die—"_

_Angel slanted a wry glance over at her. She flushed. "I mean, when one of us dies—"_

"_You'll want the other to inherit?"_

_She nodded clumsily, still blushing. "Right."_

"_And if both of you die?"_

_Buffy frowned. "Well, then we can't inherit—"_

_He shook his head kindly. Buffy was still a bit flustered. "No, madam. There are things to consider if you both should die . . ."_

"_Right. Of course. Sorry."_

_The phone on Jameson's desk began to ring. He ignored it. "Now, the most important question concerns your children—"_

"_Of course." She couldn't seem to look away from the phone. It was loud, louder than it should be, really distracting . . ._

_Jameson thumbed through the papers. "You have five children?"_

"_Four," Angel said lazily._

Buffy wrinkled her brow. "No, five . . ."

_He handed her his mug. She took a sip, and flinched. It was bitter. It tasted like . . . _

_She coughed into her hand. It was dark, thick. It looked like . . ._

_Angel cleared his throat. "Shouldn't you answer that phone?"_

Buffy sat upright in bed. Almost immediately, she wrapped her hand around the shrilly-ringing receiver on her bedside table. It was the portable from downstairs; they still hadn't replaced the one she'd broken Christmas morning. "Hello?"

"Buffy."

She wrinkled her brow and looked at the clock. Why was he calling so late?

"Xander? What's going on?"

His voice was hollow. "I'm going to be at your house in five minutes. I need you and Reagan to be ready to go."

"Go where?"

"Moore Cemetery. Angelus has Sara there."

"What? What do you mean he has—"

"I'll explain on the way. You and Reagan just be ready to go when I get there. He said she might not have a lot of time left."

The blood drained from her body. "What do you mean?"

"Just be ready."

Dial tone.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Moore Cemetery**

**relevé:** _v._ to rise up on the toes, as to pointe or demi-pointe.

"So . . . where are they?"

Xander shook his head, frustrated. "I don't know. He said 'in the roses.'"

Reagan, arms crossed tightly over her chest, frowned. "There's a lot of roses, Xander. The hedge is huge—"

"I know that. You're not helping."

Reagan recoiled a little from his harsh tone and didn't say anything else, just trudged onward through the labyrinth of flowers.

"Maybe we should split up," Buffy suggested dully. She felt numb.

"So he can pick us off one by one?" Reagan replied sarcastically. "Good idea."

"Watch your tone," Xander growled, and Reagan slunk back again.

"Don't yell at her," Buffy admonished wearily, running her hand through her hair nervously.

Xander spun around, faced her angrily. "She's not helping anything by shooting off her smart mouth—"

"And you're not helping anything by screaming at her. Just stop it."

"I—"

"Uncle Xander?" Reagan was watching them argue, a curious expression on her face.

He wheeled on her. "Shut your mouth unless you want it smacked."

Buffy's mouth tightened. "Stop it! She's not—"

Reagan whistled sharply. They stopped bickering, turned toward her with surprised expressions.

"Uncle Xander? Where did he call you from?"

"What?"

"Angelus. Where did he call you from?"

He looked irritated again. "Here. I told you—"

She raised her voice to speak over him. "No. I mean, from what phone?"

She was going to add something about the scarcity of rose-adjacent phones, but decided against it and instead tried to look meek while he thought.

"I don't know, he probably—"

"Doesn't have a cell phone. Cordelia deactivated his while she was settling all the funeral stuff."

Xander had calmed by this point, and was looking curiously at his goddaughter. "So? You think he left to get a phone? That maybe he has Sara someplace else?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. I don't think he'd lie to us about that. He wants us to see this."

"Then—"

"Then he must have used Sara's phone to call you," Buffy said quietly, looking past them both into the dark hedge.

Reagan nodded. "Right. So all we have to do is call the phone—"

"—and we'll know where they are," Xander finished.

She nodded again. "Right. Mom, can I see your phone?"

She handed it to her numbly. Reagan punched the numbers quickly; in a matter of seconds, a faint ringing could be heard in the distance.

"East," Reagan said, and started off that way.

The other followed, moving quickly. To their surprise, there was never an answer; the phone just kept ringing. All the better for them, though. They used the ringing as a beacon, following it in to its source.

For several minutes they ran through twisting turns and dead ends, following the ever-loudening ring. They were silent in their pursuit, speaking only in short phrases of admonition when someone chose a wrong path.

Buffy saw it first. The ringing was growing very loud, and Xander was about to lead them down another long corridor when Buffy stopped short, a small hurt sound escaping her throat. Reagan spun around in a wind of dark hair; Xander followed soon after.

Sara was lying on her back, very still, looking pale and tousled and very frightening, her mouth open and raw, blood speckling her face, pooling around her like her own heart's ocean.

For a long time, no one moved. Finally, Buffy remembered how to breathe and slowly walked over to her daughter, knelt beside her.

"Sara?"

She watched, waited, for a long time before the girl moved. Finally, her lashes parted; she opened her eyes and looked up at her mother.

"He's gone," she said softly.

Buffy looked behind her, then quickly back. Angelus. She'd forgotten about him completely.

"It's okay," she soothed. "We're going to take care of you, okay? It's gonna be all right."

Sara shook her head. She was crying.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**fondue:** _n._ from the French for "to melt," a movement that calls for the dancer to stand on one foot, bending and extending both legs at the same time.

". . . her nose is broken, but not badly . . . there'll be bruising around the eyes for a while, and some swelling, but she won't need plastic surgery . . . she's been beaten about the face, so there'll be more bruising, but – again – she shouldn't need plastic surgery; she should heal okay . . ."

Reagan sat to the side of the bustling hallway, trying to pull herself from the undertow of foreign noises. She was watching her mother. Buffy was standing four feet away, listening to the doctor-on-call – a tall, dark-skinned woman who spoke in a deep, reassuring voice – talk slowly through the laundry list of Sara's injuries. She wasn't looking at the doctor; she was looking past her, through her, her blonde head bent slightly, almost as if in prayer.

". . . the broken ribs are only on the left side and the breaks aren't too bad themselves . . . but there's a lot of tissue damage, a lot of bruising. We've stopped the bleeding, but she may need surgery later on . . . not cosmetic. It's all on the inside, and it could cause her pain or breathing problems later on. In addition to that, broken ribs can cause a condition called 'flail lung' in which the lungs cannot properly inflate themselves, so we'll be keeping her on constant oxygen until we're sure that's not a real threat to her . . ."

Absently – desperately – Buffy raked a hand through her hair, scooped handfuls of gold away from her face. She looked tired. Reagan couldn't remember ever seeing her mother look so old.

". . . there's not too much damage to the vaginal walls—"

"There was so much blood," Buffy said hoarsely, wincing hard.

The doctor didn't flinch. "Rape is not a pretty matter, Mrs. Gryphon. Your daughter was a virgin, which—"

Reagan thought her mother paled before her eyes.

"How do you know that?" the paling Buffy asked, looking desperate and panicked.

"There was hymen along with the blood and all the regular fluids," she said seamlessly, not missing a beat.

Reagan studied her mother. She looked like the color was bleeding out of her; she looked like she was going to faint, just pale into the nothingness of unconsciousness.

Buffy tried to clear her head. Or, rather, to not clear it, to weigh herself down before she floated away. "Will there . . . I mean, will there be . . . permanent damage? Will she . . . will she be able to . . . ?"

Dr. Madison kept her dark eyes on her, her voice steady. "There's some tissue damage, and some additional bruising, but I don't foresee any permanent damage; I seriously doubt there will even be a need for plastic surgery."

She closed her eyes for what seemed like a long time. "Will she . . . I mean, is she going to be able to have normal . . . relationships? Will she be able to have children?"

She nodded crisply. "I don't foresee any problems. Of course, we'll know more once the bruising clears up and she starts to heal—"

"She heals fast," she said numbly.

"Well, physically, she may heal fast. Any long-term damage she'll have will be psychological."

Buffy closed her eyes, held her forehead . . . like she was covering her eyes. _If I can't see this, it isn't happening_ . . .

"Okay," she murmured, for lack of a safe response.

"Do you have any questions?"

"I . . . no. Yes. Can I see her?"

"Sure. Right in there. Press the call button if you need anything."

Reagan watched numbly as her mother turned wordlessly from the doctor and disappeared into the uncertain terrain of Sara's room.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**portamento:** _n._ from Italian for "carrying," the vocal technique of bridging the interval between two notes with no break in the sound and with only very slight anticipation of the second note.

She looked so small. Lying there on her little white cot surrounded by horrible, looming machines . . . she looked so small. Buffy tried to pair the image with one from her daughter's birth, but her mind balked; the pieces didn't fit. Sara had not been born in a hospital; she had been born on the field of battle, and Buffy's mind was unable to fit baby Sara into this foreign wasteland of anesthetics and pitiless lights. She closed her eyes briefly, her mind rolling through sixteen years of injuries and illnesses and bandages, shots and respirators, and came up ailing. Sara had only ever been in the hospital to visit someone else; her mother or one of her aunts during the births of their children, Angel during his illness, assorted friends with broken arms from the playground, injuries she had never had because she was a warrior, she was stronger than that.

She didn't look strong now. She looked tiny and breakable, like that first night in the dark, noises of the battle raging just beyond them fading into nothing, when Angel had wrapped her in a blanket and sat her, warm and quiet and beautiful, onto her mother's chest. Willow and Giles were cleaning up the second child somewhere in the distance, and Rave Cooper was between her legs, gently and – for once, silently –cleaning the afterbirth from the young Slayer's trembling thighs. Buffy was slick with sweat, her body reeling in pain, the world spinning. She'd looked up at Angel holding the tiny bundle and hadn't been able to make him focus, and then he was so close and too real, looming over her, lowering something to her . . . something heavy, something warm. She couldn't place it until the world snapped into focus and she found herself staring into a pair of eyes, as big as the world and looking right at her. Buffy hadn't known what to think, hadn't known what to do; she'd just stared dumbly into her daughter's huge brown eyes and tried to deal with the immensity of the situation.

_"They have brown eyes," Angel had said, too close to her, nervously close, his hands moving uselessly at her side. He'd sounded proud, but also afraid, and she caught his eye just as she caught the tremble in his voice, and felt the jerk of his hands against her ribs, and was immeasurably and suddenly grateful for him. "Most babies are born with blue eyes, but in my family, some of us were born with brown eyes." He paused. "It's good luck. And it's tradition, which is good luck, too." _

_Dazed, she'd finally managed to bring her hand up to touch the newborn resting above her heart. She was so tiny, every part of her was just so tiny and breakable, and Buffy forced herself to listen to Angel's words: it was good luck. Thank God, that out of all this, her child could be blessed with just a little bit of luck, after everything else she'd been charmed with. It was like that fairytale, Sleeping Beauty, where all the fairies come and leave their gifts, and then the evil fairy curses the infant . . . only it was reverse, because first she'd been cursed with the burden of being a Slayer, and then with being born in the middle of an Apocalypse, and then of being born to _ /I her I _, which was ridiculous, because she couldn't be a mother, she couldn't have a child; she couldn't even keep one of those stupid electronic pets alive. . . ._

_The child made a tiny noise and Buffy brought her hand up to touch its calm face, and Sara who wasn't Sara yet because Angel said it was bad luck to name a child before it was born, and it was easier not to argue with his superstitions, she curled her little hand around her mother's, and Buffy's heart sang, released from the fetters of fear and disbelief, because the baby knew who she was and trusted her, and she could do this. _

"_I'm a mother," Buffy whispered._

_Angel's hands stopped shaking. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."_

Sara looked like that again, like that and so, so different. She looked tiny and small and utterly helpless like when Buffy had first seen her, but Sara had been born perfect and unblemished, and this new Sara . . . the Sara on the cot was bleeding and bandaged, almost foreign in her dressings. They doctors, they had cut off her clothing – Buffy had watched, breathless, horrified – with tiny little scissors. The doctors cut off every scrap of clothing and then violated her the way Angelus had. Buffy had watched this too, not understanding, not comprehending how a "rape kit" was different than rape, as they parted her legs and swabbed her, as they disinfected and bandaged her. How could they force her baby to relive that nightmare _again_ , just hours after; she had watched the tiny muscles in her daughter's face working as she fought to stave off tears, and Buffy's hands had deformed the door pane as she used all of her strength to keep still and not go inside and rip Sara from the doctors' unfeeling hands. So clean, so white and sterile, rubber-gloved; didn't they know anything? She was somebody's _baby_, she was _special_, didn't they _care_? The doctors had bandaged Sara around her middle and between her legs, and they'd put a splint on her broken nose and a little butterfly above her eye where that monster had broken open her face. (First they'd broken the wound open again to stitch it closed at a clean angle; how could they _do_ that?) Now they had her dressed in a paper-thin hospital gown, so Buffy couldn't see the bindings she knew lay beneath, but she could still see the splint on her nose, the butterfly below her hair; they covered and obscured her daughter's face, hid her baby girl from her the same way they hid the evidence of Angelus's cruelty.

Buffy walked to the bed and gently laid her hand on her daughter's wrist; she had to see if she could touch her, had to see if she was real. She felt cold, but Buffy could feel the gentle throb of her pulse; that would have to be enough. It was more than she deserved to ask for, and she was grateful for it.

There was a chair against the wall; Buffy pulled it beside her daughter's bed, sat beside her. She let her hand fall back on her daughter's sleeping body; she felt drawn to her, like the movement wasn't something she could control.

"Baby," she whispered, and her hand traveled over Sara's collarbone, over her still face. She was intact. She would be okay. She would be okay.

Buffy stroked her daughter's hair like she used to spend hours doing when the girl was small enough to sit in her lap for hours just to be petted. When she was sweet and innocent. Before rape was a concept that she could possibly understand.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital **

**grand jeté:** _n._ a long horizontal jump, usually forward, from one leg to another; the dancer does a split in midair, and this shift of the dancer's center of gravity results in the their appearing to float weightlessly through the air.

Buffy called Cordelia listlessly and asked the Seer to bring some of Sara's things; the doctors said that, while her condition was stable, she'd need to stay in the hospital for several days. Cordelia arrived looking pale and drawn, though she smiled brightly when she went in to leave Sara the things she'd brought. The smile faded almost immediately as she left the room, and she asked Buffy a few dry questions about what had happened and whether the girl would be okay before calling home and explaining to Wesley that he shouldn't worry and to Julianna that her friend had been hurt, but that she was going to be all right.

Buffy tuned her out, bristling under the dead and falsely reassuring tones of voice Cordelia was alternating between depending upon her audience. Xander paced the hallways restlessly, and she directed her attention there. Feeling strangely calm, she watched him with remarkable detachment.

"Is that helping?" she asked quietly after a moment.

"Is what helping?" His voice was still a little sharp.

"The pacing thing."

He stopped suddenly, as if he hadn't been aware of his actions before she'd brought them to light.

"Yes. No." He sighed, coming to sit beside her. "I don't know."

She looked at her hands. "There are a few hours until dawn."

He studied her face; it revealed nothing, just an outer sadness and an inner calm.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that he's probably still on the streets."

"You're not going after him."

She raised her eyes to her friend. "No. I'm not." She paused. "Do you think I should be?"

He shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"Why not? I'm the Slayer. I know he'll kill someone tonight, while I'm sitting here. Sara wasn't a meal. She was for fun. He'll be hunting."

Xander flinched when she mentioned Sara; it took him a long time to recover, the wince coming slow and staying long. Once he had recovered, he said, "I think you need to be a mother tonight, Buffy."

She nodded. "Yeah. I do, too. I know I should have the energy for both, but I don't." She shook her head. "I'm not even sure that I'm helping here, I –"

"You're not going after him," he said again, still a question and not a command.

"No," she said weakly. "No, Xander, I'm not."

"You need your energy."

"There's a fight coming, Xander. That thing with Reagan, breaking into my house, biting my daughter? He was just feeling us out, giving us a scare. I should have known, I should have seen this coming." She shook her head. "The warning shot." She took a deep breath. "This is going to be bad."

"The First wants you dead," Xander said slowly. "You have to expect that her messenger boy will try and kill you—"

She shook her head again. "No. He never intended to kill Sara. That was about pain. It was about punishment. He wanted to take from her – to take from I _me_ /I – something precious. He's telling us that it's not just about killing the Slayers. It's about destroying us."

"You're overreacting."

"I'm not." She turned her eyes to the door of her daughter's hospital room. "It's going to be bad. And we can't afford to have anyone down."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we can't afford to have a Slayer in the hospital."

"Tonight you can," he said gently.

"Tonight, yes. But not tomorrow." She brought her eyes back to her hands. "I don't know what we're going to do."

"Fight."

"And die. We need to do something. I can't let him get to another one of my children—" Her voice cracked and she stopped talking, squeezing her eyes shut and covering her mouth with a shaking hand.

His countenance softened, and he placed a big carpenter's hand on her shoulder.

"Buffy. Hey. It's going to be okay. He's not going to—we'll make sure that your kids are safe, okay? Evie and Michael and Lexi, they're all with Willow and Tara. They're safe. We're looking out for them, okay? Nothing's going to happen."

She looked up at him, dropping her hand back to her lap.

"Something's coming. Something big. Something bad. This will escalate. I can feel it."

He slid his arm off her shoulder to curve around her middle, and drew her to him, hugging her protectively. "It's gonna be okay, Buffy. Shit happens, but we'll deal with it. Everything's gonna be all right."

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital **

**effacé:** _n._ a position on stage in which the dancer faces one of the downstage corners with legs crossed, upstage leg forward. The downstage arm is usually raised in this position, so the face is shadowed or "effaced."

She felt like she had to sneak in, like it was a covert mission. Everyone was looking at her, she could feel it. Why did they have to keep the lights so bright?

Sara was lying on her back, in a relaxed but unsleeping position. Reagan stood just inside the doorway – so they wouldn't see her – for a long time, her eyes traveling over the shiny metal and plastic of the equipment and monitors, the strangely foreign length of her sister's body.

"I can feel you there."

Reagan tried to force a laugh. Didn't really work. "So much for not being an empath."

"I can always feel you." She paused. "It's not really the same thing."

She didn't respond. After a while, Sara intoned, "You gonna stand there all night?"

"I'm starting to not like hospitals."

Sara shrugged, then flinched as a spasm of pain went through her. "Runs in the family."

"Practically gallops," Reagan quipped lamely.

Another silence. Air tight.

"I'm not gonna bite."

Reagan flinched, involuntarily brought her hand up to her throat. It took Sara a moment to realize how her statement had impacted her twin. Weakly: "Sorry."

"It's okay," she murmured, finally coming from the doorway, creeping toward the bed.

"Glad you could make it."

Reagan frowned and forced herself to sit. She sank slowly to the chair her mother had occupied not too long ago, shaky.

"Hey," she said stupidly, because she thought something should be said.

"Hey."

Reagan watched uncomfortably as Sara forced a smile. Her face was shadowed with bruises, and the splint on her nose was making her uneasy.

She wondered if they still looked alike.

"How do you feel?" she asked, and then immediately regretted it.

Sara took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. "Well, I mean, they drugged me, so I can't really feel much—"

"Liar."

Sara sighed and looked at her sister. "Yeah, well."

There was another difficult silence.

"Well," Reagan whispered finally. Another pause. "The doctors say you're gonna be fine—"

"Yeah, Mom said."

"Oh."

Sara watched the pain flicker across her sister's face and cringed a little herself. "Hey, it's okay. You don't have to pussyfoot around me."

"I'm not, um—" She faltered. "Pussyfooting."

"Well, stop skulking around like I'm dead."

Reagan flinched. Sara huffed, irritated. "And stop flinching!"

Reagan flinched. Sara sighed. "Really. It's okay. Just – you know – relax, okay?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know this is hard for you, but it's hard for me, too." She paused, gauged Sara's reaction. "I'm sorry," she said again.

"It's okay." Sara extended her hand; Reagan looked at it doubtfully for a moment before enfolding it in her own. "I'm gonna be okay, right?"

"Right," she said softly. "You're gonna be just fine." There was another horrible silence. Reagan looked down at Sara's hand in hers. The same shade of skin. "You're gonna be just fine," she said again, and started to cry.

Sara looked at her for a full ten seconds before she could speak again. "Don't do that, Reagan."

Obediently, she calmed, wiped the tears from her face. "I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that! You're – stop acting like you're the one that raped me, Reagan."

She flinched again.

"Stop flinching," Sara muttered darkly.

"Sorry," she said meekly. Realizing what she'd said, she blushed and started. "I mean . . . I—" Sara was watching her fumble with an expression on her face not unlike amusement. "Okay."

Reagan sat there, looking so sheepish and sad, Sara couldn't help but laugh. Reagan looked up, eyes wide, shocked. "Sara?"

She laughed. "You just . . . you look . . ." She calmed. "Look. I'm okay, all right, dumbass?"

"All right," she agreed, eager to please.

Sara nodded, businesslike. "Okay. Good. Now, let's establish some ground rules, okay?"

Reagan looked surprised, but – wanting to placate her sister – nodded in response.

"Now," Sara continued. "We're going to be open, and honest, and you're going to ask me the question that's been killing you since you got in here."

Reagan hesitated, but only for a minute.

"Okay," she said eventually. But – hesitating again – that was all she said.

Sara rolled her eyes. "Well? Ask."

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I . . ."

"Damn it, Reagan, I asked you all that stuff about Chris—" She'd meant it to be a light thing, but Reagan cut her short with a harsh sob, and Sara realized suddenly how she'd taken it.

"It's not the same thing," Reagan said hoarsely. Sara was under the impression that she was about to cry again.

"I didn't mean it like that," she soothed. "I just meant that we can talk about anything, right?"

Reagan was mute.

"Come on, Reagan," Sara urged gently. "It's okay."

Reagan was quiet for a long time. After her moment, eyes lowered, she asked, "What did he do to you?"

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital **

**fouetté:** _n._ from the French for "whipped," a vigorous movement of the leg that is forceful enough to turn the body round.

Upon Buffy's insistence, Xander left to call Willow and Tara and make sure that her children were all right. While he did that, Buffy sat outside Sara's room, her head in her hands. The bustle of the hospital continued despite the late hour; people talked and phones rang and monitors beeped. Didn't it ever stop? She tried to close her eyes tight enough to block out the world, but it didn't exactly work. She could still hear the hospital. She did, however, miss Cordelia's coming to sit down beside her until the brunette spoke.

"How is she?"

She didn't look up. "The doctors say she'll be fine."

"Good." Cordelia waited for her to supply more. She didn't. "How are you?"

Buffy grunted. "Peachy."

Cordelia pursed her Go Spice lips. "Right. You're really poster child for having it together."

Slowly, she dropped her hands, raised her head and her red-rimmed eyes. "Listen, Cordelia—"

She raised her hands to defend against the vitriol Buffy was preparing to spit. "I'm not trying to rile you, here. I'm just . . . you know, I'm worried."

She glared. "How charitable of you."

"Look, you don't need to jump down my throat. I'm trying to be your friend here."

"Cuz we've always been so close."

"I'm not trying to bond or anything. I mean, no, we're not friends—"

"And I'm so broken up about it."

The brunette frowned. "Okay, look. Cut it out with the snide remarks. I'm not trying to get all encounter group here. The truth is, I only tolerate you because our children are friends, and because I loved Angel."

Buffy's expression softened somewhat, enough that Cordelia continued without hesitation: "He was my best friend, and I loved him. And God knows I'd walk through fire for Jules, so hanging around with you is a sacrifice I've been willing to make."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. She was amused, not offended: she felt the same way.

"But," Cordelia continued, "as I wish you no particular ill will, and occasionally you actually come through and manage to be marginally cool by saving the world or whatever—" Buffy snorted. Cordelia ignored her. "—I'm gonna help you out here."

"I think I remember this conversation."

"This is a different one. Although I can't help it if you're so deficient you need me – of all people – to give you a wakeup call every twenty years."

She rolled her eyes. "Right. So what's the great wisdom you're imparting this time?"

She shook her head. "No wisdom. This isn't an advice thing." She paused. "I just . . . we're here for you, you know? Even me," she added, voice exasperated in response to Buffy's dubious gaze. "I know you're going through a lot of tough shit, but – you know – we're all going through it, too. Yeah, he was _your_ husband, and that's _your_ daughter, but we're all connected. He was _my_ best friend and she's _my_ goddaughter, so get off your fucking martyr's pedestal or whatever and . . . you know, lean on us. We're here for you." She sighed. "Even if it's against our better judgment."

"You know, Cordelia . . ."

"Yeah?"

Buffy smiled. A small smile, and a tired smile, but a smile nevertheless. "Sometimes . . . sometimes I don't wonder what Angel saw in you."

Cordelia smiled in return. "You know, I was just thinking that about you." She clapped a hand on the Slayer's shoulder. "Come down to the cafeteria with me. I'll buy you a horrible cup of coffee."

They rose and started down the hall.

"How long have you had that speech stored up?"

"Since the funeral."

"That's about what I figured."

"Well, come on. I mean, angst much, Buffy?"

"What? You weren't sad?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't make a fashion statement about it . . ."

"You are so not invited to our next funeral."

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**chassé:** _n._ a slide in which the dancer's weight is shifted from one foot to the other.

Something distant took over Reagan's face.

"I'm going to kill him," she whispered.

Sara looked up at her, brow creased; she hadn't heard right. She couldn't have. "What?"

Reagan swallowed a bit thickly. She looked grim. "I'm going to kill him. This ends now."

"Reagan . . . you can't! I mean . . . Mom said—"

"I don't care what Mom said," she said hurriedly, looking away. She spoke in a quick, detached way; she spoke as though she were speaking to herself.

"But Reagan, the last time you fought him—Reagan, you can't. He'll kill you."

She shook her head. Still not looking at Sara. "Not if I kill him first."

"He's not going to wait and give you the first shot! He'll kill you, Reagan, you can't—"

Sara tried to rise, to grab her sister's arm and pull her back to reason. Unfortunately, she had barely risen from her pillow when the pain shot through her hard enough to shoot stars in her head; she sank back down without so much as touching Reagan.

Reagan rose. She was going to leave.

"No!"

She obediently froze, arrested in the Kamikaze motion.

Desperate, Sara gave her the last thing she had left. "I'll tell Mom."

Unbelievably, Reagan reacted with a small smile.

"I love you, Sara," she said softly.

She bent and pressed a gentle kiss to her sister's forehead, then turned and walked away, despite Sara's continuing pleas. As she reached the door, the handle turned; Reagan walked out as a nurse bustled in.

"Hello dear," the RN said pleasantly, sitting beside Sara on the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"My sister," she said desperately, trying to squirm away from the nurse's attempts to check her pulse and the dilation of her pupils. "She's going to do something stupid. You have to tell my mother—"

Suddenly, she felt a tiny, sharp pain in her arm. Confused, she looked down; the nurse had jabbed a needle into her skin. She'd been so singular in her attempts to save Reagan that she hadn't even noticed what the woman was doing.

The nurse smiled, withdrawing the syringe.

"Your sedative," she said cheerfully. "Just a little prick."

"Listen," Sara pleaded, speaking perhaps a bit louder than was necessary, since the room seemed to be getting dim. "I need to talk to my mother—"

"Right now you need rest," said the nurse pleasantly, rising to leave.

"No, my mom—"

"You can talk to her in the morning, dear," said the nurse firmly, and Sara didn't argue. She couldn't. It had gotten dark.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
The alley behind Nostradamus **

**frappé:** _v._ to strike powerfully; a quick action of the leg.

"It's all right, baby, just close your eyes . . ."

The wide-eyed, platinum blonde co-ed looked up at him stupidly for a minute, then successfully registered the command and obediently shut her eyes. Angelus worked her breasts with one adept hand so that she was still under the illusion that they were going to fuck, and was a breath away from sinking his fangs into her supple, fake-tanned neck when Reagan caused a small diversion by throwing a barstool at him. The barstool hit him full in the back; he fell forward into the stupid co-ed, who opened her wide eyes, caught one look at his enraged demon face, and ran for the hills screaming and tripping over her four-hundred dollar heels. Not so stupid after all. Irate, Angelus whipped around, growling. When his eyes caught Reagan – not difficult, as she was standing defiantly before him – he slipped from his game face and took a step toward her.

"You lost me my dinner, girl," he said softly in a silky but highly dangerous tone, kicking shards of wood from out of his path.

"You could stand to lose a few pounds," she retorted quietly, mentally sizing up the dimensions of the tiny alley, eyes flirting over the back exit of the club, the lone streetlamp, and the long stretch of darkness into which the blonde had fled.

"Had a snack earlier tonight anyway," he said maliciously, studying her face for a reaction. There was none. She stood in front of him stock still and emotionless. "How'd you find me?"

She shrugged. "Asked around. You're not exactly low-key. Lots of people—" she paused. "—well, lots of _things_ had seen you tonight."

"No harm in—"

"Was she a good fuck, Dad?" she asked abruptly. There was emotion now, he noted. She looked furious, her eyes blazing like embers within her pale, taut face.

"Fair," he said dully. "Why?"

"Because she'll be your last."

That might have been a frightening sentiment, he thought, except she'd choked on it.

"Oh, really?" he countered lazily.

"I'll see to it."

"What are you going to do?" he scoffed. "Castrate me?"

"No," she said softly, looking a bit distant. "I'm going to kill you."

He hadn't expected that, and it took him a moment to recover. "Is that right?"

She didn't answer, just looked at him with the same burning anger.

"You'd kill your dear sweet Dad?" he goaded.

"My father is dead," she said dully. "I buried him. You're just the demon that stole his face."

"No, girlie, you've got it wrong," he said darkly, coming upon her. "This is the true Angelus. Your _father_ was the cheap copy."

He was close now, less than a foot away from her. She kept her eyes on his, stared him down even as her heart began to beat faster with fear and the need for a kill. No. THIS kill.

"Are we going to argue semantics and existentialism, or are we going to fight?"

He smiled a little. "If you insist."

Before he could sneak in another snide comment, she made the first move. Quickly – faster than any human could move, faster, maybe, than even she had ever moved – she slammed her booted foot into his jaw with a well placed high-kick. Dazed, he stumbled back, hit the brick wall he'd had the blonde up against only minutes before. She was on him before he could straighten; two swift punches to his face, one to his gut. He fell to his knees; before she could strike him again, he took advantage of his position and grabbed her hard around the knees, pulling her down, too. She hit the asphalt with a thud; he was on top of her in a second, straddling her and slamming her head against the ground once, twice, before she fumbled her stake into her hand and drove it desperately into his arm. He roared in pain; while he was distracted, she kicked up hard and threw him off of her and against the brick wall again. Enraged, he roared and rose, pulling out the stake and throwing it far into the blackness of the night. Still pissed, he charged; Reagan slipped her other weapon, a sturdy silver dagger, from under her sleeve and lodged it under his collarbone as he advanced. He groaned short, backhanded her hard; she flew to the ground. The dagger soon followed, now colored with his blood; she lunged for it, and he kicked her in the stomach just as she closed her fingers around the hilt. As a natural reaction to his kick, she curled inward immediately; as she did, the dagger caught against his leg. Trying to free her weapon from his clothing, Reagan dug hard; the dagger's glinting blade sliced deep into the flesh of his leg before its liberation. He went to kick her again. She rolled away, and he found suddenly that his injured leg couldn't hold his whole weight and toppled to the ground. Scrambling on her hands and knees, Reagan raced over to him; she raised the knife over his throat. He caught her wrist on the downswing. Panicked, she pulled back hard; he let go too easily, and as she stumbled up to her feet she realized that she had freed herself, but lost her weapon. She looked over at Angelus; a gleam of silver was easily visible in his hand. He rose slowly, the blade in his hand; she rushed forward to force it from him; quickly, he grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around . . . soon, his iron grasp was around her throat, and her back was hard against his chest. The knife . . . Reagan's mind raced. Jesus, where was the knife?

"Are you jealous, Reagan?" he whispered against her ear. "Is that the real reason you came here tonight? Wish I'd picked you?"

Suddenly, the weight of his horrible words weighed down on her; she felt very alone, very small. She wanted her Daddy. . . . Reagan started to cry, imagining simultaneously sitting on her father's lap when she was a child and what Sara must have felt when she realized what Angelus was going to do to her . . .

"I want to go home," she whispered through her tears, not knowing why she'd said it, just that it was true.

"You will," said Angelus huskily, his lips brushing her cheek. With one quick, simple movement, he drove the knife into her belly. She groaned as the pain rushed through her, making her throb, making her dizzy . . . her legs gave, and she was upright now only because Angelus's strong arm was holding her tight to him. She coughed harsh as the warmth of blood burned thick at her throat.

"I'll see to it," he said softly, and the gleaming silver blade drew up . . . descended again, hard and fast . . . once. Twice. Three times. Deep, slow, wet wounds.

She could feel it. Jesus God, she felt the cold metal as it entered her, broke her . . . she could feel the blade part and tear her flesh, and the warm rush of blood as veins were cut, the warm rush of blood leaving her body . . . bleeding, Christ she was bleeding, but it almost warmed her and that was almost pleasant. . . . The pain, though, was intense, radiated from her belly throughout her body, traveling to her limbs and face and fingers so fast and furious it was almost numbness. . . . She jerked hard each time the knife went in, then went limp in his arms. After a long time, she felt herself going weightless . . . Angelus was lowering her to the ground. He turned her around, laid her gently on the ground, on her back, then lowered himself over her . . . she could feel his body against every bit of hers, like her shadow, his dark heavy weight covering her shocked, trembling body. . . . Then cold, his flesh – no, the dagger – against her face . . . gentle touches. There was a curious warmth as more blood came to the surface, mingled with the blood on the dagger . . . there was blood on her face; she could feel it. It was in her mouth; she could taste it, too much, too warm.

"What are you doing?"

The words didn't come out right. The blood filled her mouth like drowning and her words sounded overstuffed and far away.

She felt his hands on her . . . her face, then . . . Jesus, in her, in the great gaping wound in her belly. She moaned long and the world jilted suddenly, changing tracks. She was going to pass out. She mewled pathetically; surprisingly, he removed his hand from inside her. Blood, dark blood, covering his fingers, all the way to his wrist. . . . She felt light-headed again. He studied his hand like it was some novel new invention; she cringed as he ran his tongue over one finger. Tasting her. Then, more touches . . . she opened her eyes curiously at a soft sensation on her face. He was stroking her hair; her head felt light, and she was certain that this wasn't real.

"I'm gonna give you a choice, sweetheart," he said softly, not looking at her. He was watching his own actions, his sticky hands smoothing his daughter's hair.

"Choice?" Her throat was filling with blood; talking was very difficult. It was starting to become hard to breathe.

"We're both warriors here, aren't we, girl?"

Something warm and wet washed over her cheeks. More blood? No. Tears. She was crying again. She couldn't even feel it, the mechanism, only the heat of the tears. "Yes."

"Sir," he prompted gently. It reminded her of her father. He was doing it on purpose; she knew it.

"Sir," she said anyway. What the Hell did it matter, anymore?

"It's always nice to have audience participation." She didn't know what he was talking about, so she didn't answer. He didn't care, and he just went right on talking. "So I'm going to give you a choice."

He leaned in closer; more weight on her. She closed her eyes; it hurt, and she felt again like she was going to black out.

"I can kill you," he said softly, his mouth so close that she felt its movements against the bloody, tear-washed flesh of her cheek. "Or I can turn you."

Turn?

"You don't want to die, do you Reagan?"

The question rushed through her manically. No, she didn't want to die. She was sixteen years old. She didn't want to die. And what would happen to Sara? She wasn't lying before; it frightened her to be responsible for that. She didn't want to kill her sister.

But why would he offer her that? It didn't make sense.

His mouth on her throat, and she was broken out of her reverie.

He was waiting for an answer. She closed her eyes; she was barraged by a brightly colored, pulp fiction wave of images. Rising. Flash of fangs. Yellow eyes. Sara dying. Blood. Murder.

"You don't have to die, Reagan."

He was waiting.

She opened her eyes, looked up past him, to the stars. "No."

"No what?" He was looking at her curiously. Any questions of his motive were obvious in that one glance; he was playing with her. He was offering her this because it interested him to see her answer; it interested him to see her squirm. Her life or death, but it was all a game to him.

Not that it mattered. She knew her answer.

"Kill me," she said huskily. "I'll see you in Hell."

He didn't look annoyed, merely interested in the conclusion.

"As you wish," he said softly, then slipped abruptly to game face, pulling her up roughly to him. She screamed a little, not in fear, but in pain, and she felt his hands on her back, on her throat, his fangs and . . . a nauseating slam of pain as she fell back to the asphalt. Dazed, she barely registered Angelus's scream. It was getting hard to register things like light and shape and reality, but she looked up vainly to see Angelus silhouetted against the lamplight, standing suddenly tall, flailing . . . he was moving oddly, growling, and after a moment she knew why; he pulled a long, straight object out of his shoulder . . . she squinted. It almost looked like a crossbow bolt . . . she heard a sharp noise, metal on metal, and looked beyond Angelus.

Xander cocked the crossbow, held it in front of him, locked on Angelus. Painfully, she registered Giles standing behind Xander, a large cross held in his extended hand . . . Giles started to say something in a loud, clear voice, but all that was lost as the darkness took her.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**en pointe:** _adj._ "on point," the dancer rises as far from the floor as she possibly can by dancing on the tips of her toes. She carries her weight not merely on the top of the balls of her feet, but literally on the tips of her toes.

Buffy watched from the doorway. Doctors seemed to be floating around her like butterflies pollinating a flower; they looked like they were dancing with her daughter.

_oh my my  
oh hell yes  
honey put on that party dress_

Reagan was laid out on the table, looking paler than death under the lights. No pleasant blues, no muted greens; in that room, the laws of the hospital seemed suspended as the lights turned everything into pallid white or horrible lifeblood red. Silver instruments flashed over Reagan's broken body like the knife that had caused all the damage; Buffy flinched every time the light sang across one. Knives, knives . . . knives had done that to her, gutted her like a fish . . . how were they supposed to save her?

A part of her wanted to be closer. A part of her wanted to rush into the room, throw herself over her baby girl and just hold her until everything was better. She wanted to take care of her, to stroke her hair and tell her everything was going to be all right. But she was torn between that and this, this feral, predatory constant vigilance bullshit, and so she stayed outside, just far enough away that she couldn't smell the blood, but close enough that she could watch every move, the descent of each and every horrible blade.

Xander was there, too, lingering just far enough away from her that if she suddenly lashed out with one wicked claw, he wouldn't be hit. . . . Buffy was so grateful to him for saving her little girl that she was struck with an insane urge to give him everything he'd ever wanted, to take back everything and say yes when he asked her to the Spring Fling . . . but who was she kidding? If she could take back anything, it would be something that would save her daughters, and anyway, she wasn't that girl. She was never that girl, as much as it pained her. If she'd been that girl, she would have married an architect, and she would have had beautiful normal children, and she would never have had to see them butchered.

She wasn't looking at her perfect future, though; she couldn't take her eyes off of the surgery unfolding in front of her. So she didn't see Xander or the worry in his face, and she didn't see Cordelia when she came up from behind him.

"Sara's awake," she said softly.

Buffy didn't look over at her then, either. "Is she okay? Does she want me?"

These were automatic responses. Things she did care about, but born of an automated tongue.

"She wants to know if Reagan's all right."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her that Xander and Giles found her before Angelus could kill her—" Cordelia did not flinch, but Buffy did. Briefly. "—but I didn't know what else to say, so . . . I told her I'd come check."

"She's with the doctors."

"I know, but—"

"Tell her she'll be fine," Buffy murmured.

Cordelia started. "But you don't know—"

"Tell her that she's going to be just fine, and not to worry," Buffy spat, not taking her attention away from the surgery.

Cordelia backed down.

"Fine," she replied with uncommon meekness. "That's what I'll tell her."

She left, off to lie to Sara. Buffy didn't notice; Buffy didn't even turn to watch her go. Inside, one of the surgeon's kept asking for suction . . . kept saying something about hemorrhaging. Her baby was bleeding to death in there, still. Why couldn't they stop it? Why couldn't they just sew her back up? She knew it was a bad idea for them to fix her with knives.

"Buffy."

She didn't turn. "Yeah."

"Maybe you should talk to Sara—"

She didn't look at him. She was watching one of the surgeons, the fat one, in his manic ritual of looking down at Reagan, then back at her heart monitor . . . looking down at Reagan, then at the monitor . . .

"I don't see the point in worrying her until we're sure there's something to worry about."

"But maybe we should just talk to her—"

"Don't raise my children for me, Xander."

"You're doing a fine job of it yourself," he snapped.

Her muscles seized, like she was taken with a sudden chill.

"This is not my fault," she said harshly, but even she didn't believe it. He started to apologize, to put his hands on her to calm her; she shrugged him off hard and didn't even listen to his apologies.

"Look," she murmured dully. "No one ever said I was a good mother."

"I didn't mean you're not a good mother . . . and this isn't your fault! That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

"I just meant . . . that maybe you could use some help. You . . . you have a lot going on, and . . . well, you have kind of a track record of not having the best head when it comes to . . . when it comes to Angel."

Her mouth drew in tight; her muscles seized hard. "That's my daughter in there, Xander. I have a very clear understanding of Angel, thank you."

"Buffy, listen—"

"Get away from me, Xander. Tell Sara whatever you want. I don't care."

She did care. That part wasn't true.

For a long time, he stayed hovering beside her . . . then, suddenly, the heaviness beside her evanesced and she was left alone.

She didn't notice, not really. She wasn't there; she was inside that room, with the dance of knife blades over and in her daughter.

_last dance with mary jane  
one more time to kill the pain_

The beeping was getting faster. Why was it getting faster? That doctor, the suction one, his gloved hands red and slick with Reagan's blood . . . it seemed like it was spreading, red up his forearms, over his chest, on his face, soaking that mask . . . why was it going faster?

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**balançoire:** _n._ from the French for "see-saw," a movement in which as the leg moves forwards and backwards, the body bends in the opposite direction.

Xander watched from the doorway. Cordelia was perched at the edge of the bed, holding Sara's hand.

"The doctors are helping her right now," Cordelia was saying, her usually unsympathetic voice smooth and soft, reassuring, "She's gonna be fine, all right, sweetheart? She's gonna be just fine . . ."

The plan had been to walk in there, sit beside Cordelia and tell Sara exactly what was going on, but now . . . he looked at Cordelia's eyes, the way they pinched because she was fighting tears . . . he looked at Sara on the bed, believing every word of it. Ignorance is bliss, or something, but she looked so reassured by Cordelia's lies that he couldn't do it. He couldn't tell her the truth.

He watched from the doorway, and didn't say a word.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**lamento:** _n._ a tragic aria, often placed just before the climax of the plot.

"Please wake up."

It seemed almost stupid to try and talk to her, but no stupider than talking to God, not really. And stupid was better than the hurt that came with doing nothing, with sitting there silent waiting for . . . well, waiting.

Buffy sat in a chair beside the quiet bed where Reagan lay sleeping. She held her daughter's hand, and talked to her like talking to God.

"Reagan, sweetheart, please . . . you have to wake up, baby." A bitter, ugly noise escaped her throat before she could swallow it. "Reagan . . ." She closed her eyes tight, quickly building a dam to keep herself from crying. "You stupid girl, how could you . . . ?" The dam proved ineffective; the tears came, washing over her face in hot rushes. After a lifetime of not crying, she sure was doing a lot of it lately. Making up for lost time. "Why, baby, why did you . . . ? Oh, Jesus, why didn't I?"

Buffy heard a sudden noise; desperately, she thought it might be her daughter waking up. It wasn't; after a moment, Buffy's fantasy was shattered when a white coat swung into view.

"Mrs. Gryphon?"

Since the white coat had a voice, Buffy figured it probably deserved her attention; she looked up warily. The doctor was standing a few feet away, at the end of the bed, looking very round and very tired. She remembered that face. The fat surgeon who kept looking at Reagan's monitors.

"Mrs. Gryphon, I'm Dr. Wright, I operated on Reagan a little while ago?"

"Uh-huh."

He looked at her kindly, but with some worry. "I'd like to talk about Reagan's condition with you."

"Okay."

He cleared his throat a little. Mrs. Gryphon's voice was emotionless, though there were still tears on her face. "Reagan's sustained some major injuries to her abdominal cavity. Unfortunately, there was some damage to some of her major organs; he hit her liver and her colon, both. We've patched them up, and my colleagues and I don't believe there will be any long-term damage, but there is some risk of the sutures coming undone and creating a need for additional surgery."

"Why would they come undone? Didn't you do it right?"

There was no accusation in her voice. There was nothing in her voice.

"It's not really the kind of thing we can control, ma'am. It's just the same as tearing stitches anywhere else; twist the wrong way, and they can come loose."

"Okay."

"There's going to be a lot of scar tissue on her stomach; she may need plastic surgery to correct that."

"Okay."

"She . . . she lost a lot of blood. We replaced it, of course, but she was alive on far too little blood for a good time span. Her body went into shock."

"Is that why she won't wake up?"

"Yes," he said softly.

"Is she in a coma?"

"Technically, no." He paused, his face grim. "Not yet."

"Will she be?"

"We're not sure. It's not the kind of thing we can control, either. But there is that possibility, yes."

"Is she going to die?"

"We don't know."

Buffy shut her eyes for a moment. Her head hurt. Why were the lights in these hospitals always so damn bright?

"What kind of odds are we playing here?"

"The longer she stays asleep . . . the worse her chances are."

She nodded. "What can I do?"

"Exactly what you're doing now. Just sit with her. Pray."

"I wasn't praying," said Buffy automatically. "I don't pray anymore."

"Maybe you should start up again," he said quietly, and left the room.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**preghiera:** _n._ Italian for "prayer," an aria or chorus in which the characters pray for divine assistance.

Buffy had been fifteen when she was Called. Her girls had been thirteen, and the two years previous had her and Angel on constant pins and needles, waiting the day the same way you await a root canal. It was a necessary step, something that had to be done in order to further your life, but it was a prospect filled with such horrible worst-case scenarios that they were literally unable to sleep many nights for the stress.

Not that they weren't prepared. Buffy and Angel had started training their daughters for their destiny not long after they taught them the alphabet. When they were teaching them colors and animals, they taught them breeds of demon, types of weapon. The girls started learning the manners of death around the same time Sara started playing AYSO soccer, and they learned how to balance the weight of a sword against their bodies two years before Reagan went on pointe. But – and Buffy had insisted on this, made a point of it even though Angel had never put up any form of resistance – they had never seen a vampire before they were Called. They never went on patrol, they never hunted; they even had a strict curfew to make sure they didn't succumb to any temptation to start the game early.

They received the dreams the same night they received their first menses. The Watcher's Council called the next morning; they needn't have: Buffy knew. That night, the four of them went out for the girls' first patrol. Buffy had begged Angel to postpone it another week – the dreams were traumatizing at first, and not to mention the stress of their womanhood coming at the same time . . . oh, and Angel, they're _bleeding_, we can't take them out there bleeding – but he'd just pulled her close, kissed her softly, and walked out of the room to prepare his daughters.

He was right. Of course he was right. Postponing things wouldn't do anything but make her resolve weaker, and the girls were strong. They would be fine. They would.

_They were nervous. Excited, but nervous. They walked alongside their parents through the Valley of the Suns Cemetery – Sunnydale's oldest, and also the one closest to their house and Angel's favorite. Buffy had always thought it strange that he had a favorite cemetery, but he'd always seemed to have a secret kinship with old things, so she didn't question it, and Valley of the Suns was automatically the starting place to aimless nightly patrols. To Buffy and Angel, this was old hat; they walked along easily, watching automatically for movement or telltale fresh dirt. Sara and Reagan walked with unnatural, stiff paces: stopping now and then to make sure a shift in leaves was just the wind, and then running to catch up with Mom and Dad, four gravestones ahead by now. Buffy had almost allowed herself to relax when Angel slowed his gait slightly; his muscles tightened imperceptibly, his hand closed around the stake in his belt. She saw the disturbance just a moment after he did: a flash of white skin disappearing behind a mausoleum. She motioned silently to her girls and the four of them made their way to the crypt. _

_When they reached the small stone building, she turned to Angel beside her and whispered, "Maybe I should go first. You know, just to check things out."_

_He raised an eyebrow, the hint of a smile playing on his lips. _

"_I think that may defeat the point of tonight's outing." _

_She frowned. "I won't—"_

"_Slay them all by yourself?"_

"Them_?" Sara hissed nervously, eavesdropping unsubtly. "How many are—"_

_Buffy hushed her, and Angel murmured, "Three, I think." He listened for a moment more, and then nodded. "Three." He focused on Buffy. "No. We'll all go together."_

_She didn't look pleased, but she didn't argue. Instead, she sighed, straightened, and walked around the mausoleum to face of the trio of vamps head on. Angel followed her, motioning the girls on; they trailed behind him, walking a bit shakily. _

_The vampires didn't notice them immediately, busy with other things. They had broken into the mausoleum and were trying to navigate one of the large stone coffins out the badly broken door. It wasn't going well, so it took them a moment to notice the little blonde Slayer watching them, arms crossed over her chest, and her three dark-haired companions some feet behind her. _

"_Stealing corpses?" Buffy asked when they finally swung their gazes her way. "Or remodeling?"_

_One of the vampires – the tallest, wearing horrible funeral dress – took a step toward her and growled deep. "Slayer."_

_She opened her mouth to say something snappy back when she heard a small noise from behind her. She turned quickly; her daughters were looking at the trio of undead with wide-eyes and slack mouths. Behind her, the said undead laughed._

"_Did you bring your _kids _ with you, Slayer?" one of them taunted. "What happened? Couldn't find a sitter?"_

_She turned on her heel, smiling sweetly. "No, we're experimenting with home schooling. The lesson tonight has to do with killing you."_

_The tall one smiled and walked toward them, stopping less than a foot from Buffy. "Don't think it'll be a very good lesson if I do away with teacher, hmm?"_

_Without skipping a beat, Buffy balled her fist and socked him hard in the face, then brought her knee up deftly into his stomach. He folded, and she spun him around and pushed him back into Angel, who grabbed him, hit him again, and dropped him to the ground at his daughters' feet. _

"_You ready for this?" he asked them softly. Sara nodded shakily, but Reagan just stared wide-eyed as the demon got to his hands and knees and then his feet before her. _

"_You take the other two," Angel instructed Buffy, and she immediately turned and met the other demons as they rushed toward her. After a brief scuffle they were dust, and she turned – smiling – to check her girls' progress. Her smile faded. Their vampire was still alive. Angel was supervising, but he wasn't helping, standing four feet away with his arms crossed over his chest. Sara and Reagan had arranged themselves so their vampire could bounce back and forth between them but not get away, but he wasn't _dead _ yet. Buffy tried to calm herself; it was their first time, these things took awhile. But they . . . her girls were doing badly, making stupid mistakes and taking easily avoidable blows. Reagan's forehead was bleeding down into her eye, and as she watched Sara took a stupid hit to the chest and cried out. _

_Buffy looked over at Angel; he was wearing an expression of concentration, but not one of concern. He was watching their movements carefully; every once in a while he'd give them a bit of advice. If he wasn't worried, maybe she shouldn't worry . . . her heart pounded inside her chest like a bird trying to escape the cage of her ribs. _

"_Don't think so much about your punch, honey," Angel murmured. "Just do it. You're wasting time making it perfect and it's letting him figure out what you're doing."_

_After another tortuous few minutes, Sara managed to land a stake home, and their vampire crumbled to ashes. Both girls stared wide-eyed at the pile of dust, unspeaking, unmoving. _

_Buffy moved forward to congratulate them; much to her surprise, Reagan collapsed upon her, sobbing. As she folded her arms around her child, the girl cried, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to do it ever again, Mommy, please. . . . Oh, God, I could feel them, I could feel them inside me . . ." _

_And Buffy hadn't known what to say. So she didn't say anything, just held her child silently as the four of them walked slowly home. Wordlessly, she kissed her daughters goodnight and put them to bed. The girls fell almost immediately to troubled sleep, and as soon as they were both tucked safely into their night of vampire nightmares, Buffy walked to her bedroom, stripped, and washed her face. Angel came into the room some minutes later, sat at the edge of the bed, and waited for his wife. She came out of the bathroom and he stood; she walked past him and to her side of the bed. _

"_It didn't go that badly," he said softly. "The first time you slayed—"_

_She turned to him, looked him straight in the eye. He stopped short. _

"_I don't want to talk about it," she murmured. "We'll discuss it later, all right?"_

_Taken aback, he just nodded numbly._

"_All right," he whispered, and took a step toward her to kiss her goodnight. But he stopped halfway, sensing her tension, and simply touched her hand before turning away from her, stripping, and slipping into bed without a word. _

_She watched him with an unpleasant heaviness in her stomach. Finally, she was able to force herself to get into bed beside him; she lay turned toward his broad back, and for a moment her hand hovered inches from touching him before she could work up the courage to lay her hand on his shoulder, kiss the back of his neck. _

"_I love you," she whispered, and stayed with her face resting at the nape of his neck until his breathing slowed to the deep breaths of sleep. She kissed him again and rolled onto her back, looked up at the ceiling. _

"_Oh, God," she whispered, thoughts flickering back to Reagan's terror-stricken eyes, to Sara's cry as the vampire got in that cheap shot. "God, please. They have so much to go through. Please, please give them the strength to carry through."_

Reagan was still on the bed before her. Still and too white, like she was fluorescing the same as those god-awful lights they had everywhere. Buffy felt numb beside her; she was moving slowly, like she was moving through time at a different pace than her daughter, than the flickering lights overhead and out in the hall. Her technology was not up to date.

Her hand hovered over Reagan's sleeping face, unable to descend. Even if she tried to touch her, her daughter was her polar opposite and just stayed her off like a magnet would. She couldn't, couldn't touch her . . .

Her hand hovered over her daughter's face, and Buffy was struck with an image fifteen years old, attending mass with Angel . . .

"_In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . ."_

_And the priest's hand staying for a moment over the parishioners' foreheads before anointing them with God's blood._

She withdrew her hand and folded it and its twin awkwardly in her lap.

"God," she started uncertainly. "I know we're not really on the best of terms, You and I. That we haven't been for a while now. But God . . . please. My daughter . . . she's an innocent, please . . . please don't let my sins weigh Your decision for her. Please help my little girl . . ." She felt her lip tremble, but she bit it and it stopped. She wasn't going to cry. She had to be strong to ask for this. "God, she's such a good girl. She only did what she did to help her sister, and she's only a baby, please; she has so much more _time_ left, there's so much more she has to do . . ." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly for the weight of her words. "Please help her. Please heal her and make her strong. Just, please help her. . . ."

There was a tiny spike of noise outside of her prayer, and it shattered her concentration. Buffy's eyes shot open; her hands fell away from their yin-yang in her lap. The beeping, Reagan's beeping was going faster. . . . Buffy's heart pounded inside her chest. She knew that noise; she knew what happened when the beeping changed. She stood automatically, shaking her head, whispering "no" over and over again.

"Please, please don't do this . . ."

The tears she'd held back washed over her face as she stood in the middle of the room frozen, eyes glued to the spikes on the heart monitor and unable to move until they calmed.

"Please don't do this, please let her live, please . . ."

She fell to her knees beside the bed, her head hitting the frame hard enough to bruise but she didn't care, just balled her hands together again and through her tears begged God to spare her child.

"Please, please don't take my baby, please . . ."

There was a noise behind her, and she felt hands on her ribs, her arms, lifting her up . . . two doctors rushed into the room, one hoisting her off the floor and away from her child, the other running to Reagan's side, a syringe shining in his hand. Buffy wanted to run to her daughter's side but she couldn't; time was slowed for her again, and she couldn't move at all, was forced to hang suspended in the horrible moment of the doctor pausing, his hand grabbing Reagan's arm, the needle poised to go in . . .

And then time stopped completely.

For fifteen seconds, the world absolutely stopped. There was no noise, no movement, but the heaviness was lifted from Buffy, and she was able to breath again when time sped up again.

The beeping stopped.

The beeping stopped and Buffy broke free from the doctor that had a hold of her; she was halfway to the bed when Reagan sat bolt upright in bed – pushing the doctor with the needle into the bank of her machines three feet away – and screamed bloody murder. This all happened within five seconds, and when time finally slowed itself to its normal pace, the heart monitor was going again and Buffy was sitting beside Reagan on the bed, holding her close, and the girl was breathing frighteningly fast and clawing onto her mother's arms around her.

"Baby, baby, you're all right . . ."

The doctor pulled himself off the floor, retrieved his needle, and – like touching a ghost – brought his fingers slowly to Reagan's arm. She jerked her head in his direction, her eyes the same unending dark as the First Slayer's. Buffy could feel the girl's heart pounding against her chest.

"She's awake," the doctor said softly, stupidly, looking – frankly – as though he'd just witnessed a resurrection.

Buffy laughed and hugged her daughter. Reagan made a quiet hurt noise and Buffy started, let go of her daughter and gently laid her back against her pillows, stroking her hair, holding her hand, thanking God.

"You're awake," Buffy echoed, grinning even with tears drying on her face.

Reagan's eyes were still spooked horse shocked, but they focused on her mother and her mouth formed the words correctly the first time and in an even voice. "What happened?"

"Xander and Giles," she whispered. "They saved you. They saved you and you're all right."

The doctor with the needle tried to edge his way in to do some tests, but Buffy shoved him away and he got the hint; he and his partner left the room, shutting the door behind them.

"Is he dead?" Reagan asked slowly, her brow wrinkling slightly.

"Xander?" Buffy asked, confused.

"Angelus."

Buffy's lips pursed and she shook her head. "No." She paused briefly. "But he will be. I'll see to it."

"And Sara?"

She smiled gently. "She's fine. Worried about you, but fine." She stroked her daughter's face, squeezed her hand. "Hush, baby. Everything's fine, and you . . . you're going to be all right."

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**mezza voce:** _v._ Italian for "half voice," singing at half-power, quietly and unemotionally.

Buffy leaned against the doorframe, crossed her arms over her chest. The doctors had done their tests and proclaimed – very, very surprised and relieved – Reagan to be in stable condition. Buffy had nagged at them until they moved Reagan into Sara's room, so that she could watch both of them at once. The girls were both asleep now, lulled to slumber by fresh medication.

Now the only things to do were mundane chores. And the waiting.

Buffy cleared her throat. "Reagan . . . she wants some things from home. The doctors say she's going to have to be here for a while, and there are some things that she wants."

Xander didn't say anything. Wearily, Buffy closed her eyes, then continued.

"I can't leave the hospital. I need someone to go to the house and get them. I hate to ask you, but—"

After a moment, he nodded slowly. "Sure, Buff. It's no problem. What does she want?"

She closed her eyes briefly, thinking. "Pajamas . . . the doctor said she can wear her own pajamas as long as they're fairly loose and easy to get away from her stomach. She has a bunch of flannel ones, pants with shirts that button up the front. She'll need . . ." She frowned. "She's going to be here for a while, and there's nowhere for me to do laundry. So if you could bring maybe six or seven pairs?" He nodded, and she continued, "She'll need underwear, socks. Again, six or seven pairs of each . . . no bras. She's—they've got her trussed up in this cast thing, so she doesn't need . . ." She let her words drift off into a respite to think. "Her hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste, and . . . she wanted her pillow and the quilt from her bed. Do you think you can remember all that?"

He nodded. "Sure. What about Sara? What does she need?"

Buffy shook her head. "Cordelia already went and brought back a bunch of her stuff. She's fine."

"Okay. What about you? What do you need?"

She laughed a little, bitterly, and shook her head.

"Nothing. There's nothing I need that you could bring me."

He looked concerned. She didn't notice.

"Maybe some pajamas for you, too? You can sleep, some."

She shook her head. "No."

"I'll get the nurses to bring a cot in, you can—"

"No!" she repeated, perhaps a bit more sharply than she'd meant to. Seeing the surprise and hurt on his face, she took a deep breath, composed herself, and said again, "No, Xander, I'm fine. I just . . . I have to stay with them. Make sure they're okay."

Realizing that there was no way he'd win this one, he merely nodded again. "Okay, Buff. Fine."

He started away. Halfway down the hallway, he turned back, one last thing clawing at his tongue. Buffy was gone, vanished back into the room. He sighed and turned around, walked away.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**brisé:** _n._ a beating jump from fifth position to fifth position traveling either forward or backwards; from the French for "to break apart" or "to burst."

Buffy was sitting between the girls' beds when he returned, looking very tired. The girls on either side of her were asleep and had been for some time, so she chanced looking away from them to look up at Xander when he entered the room.

"Hey." He held up the duffle full of Reagan's things as an admission ticket; she nodded once, then went back to obsessively watching her daughters.

Xander set his bag down by the wall, noticing that one of the nurses had brought in a cot. It was against the wall, nicely made with sheets and blankets. Xander was sure Buffy'd been in there when they'd brought it in; however, the little bed showed absolutely no signs of being touched by the Slayer. He frowned, then brought Reagan's pillow and quilt over to her bed. Buffy looked up at him, watched as he set the pillow at the foot of the bed, then carefully laid the quilt over Reagan's sleeping form.

"Thank you," Buffy whispered.

"It's no problem, Buff." He looked at her for a long time, weighing his chances, before speaking again. "I brought everything you asked for. I also brought some clothes for you, and some toiletries." Her mouth pursed a bit. "And some pajamas."

She frowned. "I told you—"

"I want you," he said firmly, trying to modulate his voice so that it sounded the way Angel's or Giles's did when they were giving her an order. Caring, but no nonsense. He'd never spoken to Buffy like that himself, so it didn't quite fit right. "To put on some pajamas, go over to that cot over there, and get some sleep."

She frowned some more, full on Slayer-pout face. "No."

He hesitated a moment before taking action. Someone had to be the grownup here, to take care of her. And Angel was dead, so he guessed he'd have to do it. The thought made him a little queasy. Nevertheless, he moved close to her, took her by the arms and lifted her to her feet. She was so shocked by his action that she didn't have time to react; Xander was glad for this, because he was fairly certain any reaction would have been violent. Still holding her by the arms, he looked her straight in the eye and said, "You are going to go over there and put on some pajamas. Right now."

For a full five seconds or so, Xander was frightened out of his mind. _All right,_ he thought. _This is where she kills me._ But she didn't. Instead, she looked at him with a pout for another second, then her lip trembled a little . . . finally, she hung her head a little, became heavy under his hands.

"Okay," she said softly.

He did a mental double take. "What?"

"Okay," she repeated, then gently extricated herself. She walked over to the duffle bag, pawed through it for a second, and came to standing with a nightshirt in her hands. Slowly, looking down at the pajamas in her hands, she walked over to the cot. She dropped the shirt to the little bed, then – back to Xander – crossed her arms and drew her shirt up over her head. Xander caught sight of her smooth, tanned back and the gold of her hair bunching then falling over her tiny shoulders before he realized that he was watching her undress, and hastened to turn around. He was only turned for a second, though; quick thoughts flew through his mind: _You're both grown-ups, here,_ and _If she didn't want you to look, she would have said something._ He turned back in time to see her twist her arm behind her back, unfasten her bra. The satin backing fell apart, exposing more skin; she used her little fingers to push the straps off her shoulders. The bra fell from her breasts, something that Xander couldn't see . . . but the just knowing filled him with sudden warmth. He watched the underwear fall to the cot, on top of Buffy's shirt, and then watched the way her shoulders flexed as she unbuttoned her jeans, the way she twisted her hips as she toed off her shoes. She bent slightly and removed her socks, one at a time; he watched her backside as it tightened the denim over its curves, the side of her breasts as she bent over. She straightened, and then he watched as she slid her hands down her thighs, peeling the denim from her battle-hardened body. She removed her jeans and folded them, laid them on top of her shirt, bra, and socks; he watched the small muscles in her back moving, the taut curves of her bottom filling her panties like ripe fruit.

She bent and picked up the nightshirt from the cot; it fell easily over her head, settling over her lovely golden body like it had lived there all its life. She straightened her clothes, set them under the cot by her shoes, and then turned back to Xander.

"Okay," she said again.

The muscles in his face didn't seem to be working. Strange.

"Okay," he repeated hollowly.

She ran her hand through her hair; it was all over her face, piling on her shoulders and over her throat like Rapunzel's straw turned into gold. "Did you bring a hair tie?"

He nodded. "Yeah. It's in the bag, with the toiletries and stuff."

She nodded numbly, walked to the duffle and pawed around a little. She unzipped the toiletries bag, extracted a brush and a rubber band for her hair. She ran the brush through her hair a few times – futilely – and then scooped handfuls together, slipped the hair tie around a messy ponytail.

Slowly, she straightened, turned back to Xander. Her face was still tear-streaked, her hair still tangled despite her attempts to smooth it. She looked very small in front of him: vulnerable, delicate.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He started to relax, began to answer her with a simple, casual remark. "It's no prob—"

"You saved my little girl's life."

A shock ran through him, and his jaw went slack as he fumbled for something to say. "We were just there in time, Giles and me."

An odd expression passed through her. She looked frustrated, tired, but bent on something. Like something had suddenly dawned on her, like she'd suddenly seized on a decision. It wrinkled her brow a little, pulled in her cheeks taut.

"But you're always there," she insisted. "You're always there, taking care of the kids or rescuing me or . . . you're always there."

"I'm your friend, Buff. You know, you and me and Will, we've been friends forever, right? I'm your—"

"You're our heart."

Xander faltered a little. He wasn't sure where this conversation was going. "Buffy, look—"

"Look Xander," she said suddenly, her voice trying to be firm but betrayed by an undercurrent of vulnerability. "I owe you a great debt. And . . . I want to repay it."

Slowly, she sank to the cot, sitting in a bit of a prone position, her arms behind her, holding her weight.

"I owe you," she said softly, folding her arms and bringing up her legs, lowering her pretty body to the cot.

She stayed half reclined up on her arms, a position that had her very much lying in bed but that also kept her shoulders, breasts, and lovely throat highly exposed. It was very suggestive position, and this didn't escape Xander. She looked up at him hopefully, subtly cocking up one leg and leaning the other aside, baring quite a bit of inner thigh.

Xander's jaw dropped a little, despite himself. "Buffy, you don't owe me anything—"

"I do!" she said, voice a bit ragged. She sounded like she was about to cry. "You saved Reagan's life—" She ignored his interruptions about Giles and serendipity. "—and in return, I would gladly give you my own." She wilted a little, darkened a few shades to her true colors of tired and sad. "Let me give you this, instead."

Driven to a state of dizzy, he sat beside her on the cot.

"You don't owe me anything," he repeated. She opened her mouth to protest. He continued before she could say a word. "The things I do . . . I do them because I'm your friend and I I _love_ /I you. Not because I want . . ." He looked doubtfully at her exposed thigh. ". . . a reward."

"I know that. I'm not offering you this because I want to . . ." She blushed. "Settle my tab."

Her blush spread like liquid from her pretty cheeks down her throat, over her chest and shoulders. He tried to ignore how attractive a gesture it was. "Buffy—"

She let her leg come back down to the cot. This eliminated the distraction of all that inner thigh and a brief view of white cotton panties, but it also created a problem of an immeasurable stretch of toned, tanned upper thigh and the way her bottom looked with just that little nightshirt over it. Xander goggled a little.

Buffy slid a slender finger over one of his big carpenter's hands, danced quietly over his flesh until she reached the fold of his palm. She slipped her finger into the dark warmth, twisting her wrist subtly and suddenly filling his hand with hers. She scooted a little closer to him, so that he could feel her small shoulder and pert breast against his back. Her bare thigh pressed against him, was touching him, and the feel of her hard nipple against his shoulder and her strong leg against his was enough to nearly drive him to distraction.

But talking. She was talking. He forced himself to ignore how almost naked and how very willing she was and focus on the horrible things she was saying.

"You said once that you wanted me to look at you with love in my eyes, to offer myself to you, and really mean it. Really know what it means. I'm offering you that now."

His face took on a pained expression as he forced himself to scoot away from her, as he pulled his hand away from hers. "Buff—"

She laid a hand on his shoulder, holding him to her, or just keeping him there. She looked at him for a long time, the expression on her face pained, confused, then deeply hurt as the full extent of the situation dawned on her. Her cheeks went taut, her lip trembled. She closed her eyes; a tear escaped from under her dark lashes, caressing the curve of her cheek like a lover. The way, he imagined, that she wanted him to touch her.

"Don't tell me you don't want this," she whispered.

"No," he agreed. "That'd be a lie." He rose to leave; she followed his movement, coming up to her knees on the cot, still holding pathetically to his shoulder. "Goodnight, Buffy."

"Xander—"

He bent in to kiss her. She slid her hand from his shoulder to the line of his neck, trying to meet his lips with her own, but he cupped her face in his hand and pressed the kiss to her forehead, instead.

"Goodnight, Buffy."

He forced himself not to look back as he left the room, but it didn't really matter.

He could still hear her crying.


	12. Gargoyles

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**/Sara/**

It's dark when I wake up, but not the same quiet night as home. A long rectangle of white – beyond the dark, a sudden stretch of the brightest bright I've ever seen – spills in where the door's open to the rest of the hospital. And noise, movement . . . the hospital is absolutely made of noise and movement, nocturnal and restless like the jungle when Mom and Dad took us to the Congo when they went over to help kill some native demon.

The door shines right beside me, and as the room lengthens, it darkens. Further into the dark, there are two long sleeping shapes: Reagan, and then – further off – Mom, sleeping fitfully on a cot at the furthest edge of the room.

My heart gives brief flutter at the sight of my sister, and I try desperately to see her through the dark. I think, for a second, that maybe she's just sleeping here with me like Mom is, but then I allow reality through and realize – with a slow, sick feeling – that there's an IV running into _her_, and that beep-beep-beep is from a heart monitor counting her heart beats . . . he hurt her. If she hasn't healed yet, if she's in the hospital, then he hurt her bad.

Through the impossible dark, I try to see the damage done to her. I can't; she's all shadow. I try and rise up a little to see her closer, but it hurts so bad that I'm only up for a second, and then I fall gasping to the bed, shaken, shaking. From where I am, she looks fine, unbroken, unmarred. She's lying on her back, arms by her sides, just still . . . it doesn't look like anything's _wrong_. I wonder briefly – I flinch from the thought like from a blow – if he did to her what he did to me. And then I hope for anything else.

I try to rationalize. Aunt Cordelia said the doctors were with her; I knew she'd been hurt. Okay. Still good. Aunt Cordelia also said she'd be fine, so that was true too, wasn't it? Okay, fine. But that still doesn't answer any questions. I still don't know what he's done to her.

Damn it. If I could get up, and if Reagan weren't possibly on her deathbed, I would so kick her ass. The dumbass. What the Hell did she think she was doing?

Back to rationale. Okay, she's got an IV, which, while not great, is no indicator of fatal injury. From where I am, I can't see any bandaging, at least not on her face or the arm I can see, so maybe he didn't thrash her too badly. (Of course, it's so fucking dark over there I can hardly see anything; maybe I'm missing a nest of bruises). Okay. Heart monitor. Again, not really a cheerful sign, but pretty much standard issue here, so no cause for alarm. Ah. A good sign. No respirator, no mask even. She's got one of those tubes that lies across her face, below her nose, but that's not breathing _for_ her, so that's . . . that's a good sign, right? She— 

My thoughts are broken when someone comes from the impossible white into our room. I squint; for a moment, all I can see is a silhouette, just like Reagan. But then the figure steps into the room; it's a nurse, clipboard in hand. It's a different one than was visiting me before, which is good cuz I might have strangled her for letting Reagan go off and . . . and whatever she did.

The nurse looks at my chart, checks my machines and the IV. When she sees I'm awake, she smiles at me and asks me how I'm feeling. I mumble something about being fine and then ask her what's wrong with Reagan, is she okay?

She goes quietly to Reagan's bed, pulls her chart. She studies it for a moment, frowns briefly, and then replaces it, checking her machines like she did mine.

"Well?" I feel like I can't breathe.

"The doctor's marked her progress as stable."

"What does that mean?"

"That her body is able to carry out its normal functions, and that her condition is not likely to worsen."

"I—okay." Well, that's good, isn't it? "What happened to her?"

She slants a glance over at me, looking at me like this information is confidential and who do I think I am. But after a moment, she relents – perhaps picking up the fact that we're probably identical under my bandages – and answers me. "She's been stabbed."

My mind blanks completely. "What?"

"Stabbed," she repeats, like comprehension will be awarded magically if she says that horrible word over again.

"I . . ." Really, I cannot process this. My mind is just not accepting it. "Where?"

"Her abdominal cavity." She's answering me in short, tight little answers. She wants to leave. Well, fuck her, she's not going anywhere until I know if my little sister is all right.

"Is it bad?"

"The doctors have marked her condition as stable," she says in a tone that doesn't convince me that that means anything, and then breezes out of the room before I can formulate another stuttering question.

Stabbed.

Well, fuck.

That doesn't tell me anything! Exasperated, I look briefly up at the ceiling; then I look over at Reagan, look hard. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, so I can see if you're okay and so I can yell at you for being so fucking stupid.

Wake up.

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
the Harrises' Home**

**/Xander/**

I leave the hospital altogether. I can't imagine being in that same building with her after that; I'm starting to think that it would have been less painful for her, less humiliating, if I'd just taken her up on it. Taken her. Or . . . you know. Dammit.

I drive home slowly. I park in the garage and switch off the headlights, turn off the car, but it's a long time before I can gather the strength to move myself from there. So I sit for a long time in the dark garage, seatbelt still on, muscles atrophied. 

After a long time, my paralysis lifts – all at once, like a sudden thaw when the sun rises – and I get out of the car and walk inside, up the stairs to the bedroom. Mary's asleep, dead asleep, her graceful form still under the sheets, the spill of her dark hair shadowing her pillow. I sit beside her like I'm leaden, place a hand on her ribs, on her warm weight, feel her body move with breathing. She's really, really beautiful, soft and dark and . . . 

She makes a small noise, arches into my palm. "Mm."

I hear her waking, and I'm suddenly weighted with sadness.

"Hey," I say heavily.

Slowly, moving under my hand, she turns onto her back. She's looking at me with her Spanish-dark eyes squinting, full of sleep, her face and chest flushed – I have an unpleasant vision of Buffy – her thighs bared – Ouch. Buffy again. – and her belly bare where her nightshirt comes off of it. She has a few dark marks, stretch marks, from when she was pregnant with our boys. My marks. I did that. Tentatively, I touch one, run a finger over the dark line even though she's warned me over and over how sensitive she is there. But she doesn't say anything about it; when she speaks, it's of a very different matter.

"You came home. I thought you were going to stay there with Buffy and the twins." 

I think I flinch a little when she says Buffy's name, but she doesn't notice.

"There's nothing else I could do. I thought they'd want to be alone."

This is not entirely a lie, but it's so close to one and she knows me so well, I'm irrationally afraid that she'll catch the air of it on me, know the lie and what it covers. But only for a second. The mostly-lie passes muster, and she swallows it without question, looking at me with sadness and pride and love.

"You're a good man," she says softly, coming over to me, wrapping her arms around me, letting her gentle weight fall over me.

I want to tell her that I'm not, but she smells so sweet and she feels so good that I can't imagine saying that. Instead, I tell her I love her, and she sighs, a noise between laughing and crying, and holds me tight, buries her face against me.

"Oh, God," she whispers. "I love you." 

I feel her lips on me, warm and taut, and she kisses my mouth and starts crying, the tears running over her face, past her lips to mine. Without saying anything, and without either of us acknowledging her crying, she starts undressing me.

"Don't—" I start, but when she pulls away from me and studies my face, she doesn't understand. Her eyes travel my breathless face for a moment before deciding I'm . . . I don't know, somehow just being virtuous, and descending on me again, her mouth on my throat, my shoulders, my chest. . . . She runs her hands over my hips; I'm completely undressed now, and she rubs my cock with the palm of her hand a few times, readying me, before slipping out of her own underwear and straddling me. She covers me gracefully but with a small moan, and she starts a slow, gentle rhythm, running a hand over her neck, through her hair, trying to ease the initial ache from her flesh before she's stable enough to finish undressing herself. Once she's on solid ground again, she crosses her arms and pulls her nightshirt off over her head, exposing her flat stretch-marked stomach and her small perfect breasts, her tiny round shoulders. She's still crying, and she's starting to breathe shorter; occasionally, the two meet and a tiny mewl escapes her throat.

Her hands are on my shoulders, and the way she arches her neck when she rides me . . . she's always reminded me of a mustang, you know, the way they shake their heads and arch up for no reason except they're full of the spirit of the land and the wind. She moves with that same spirit and effortless, accidental grace, and the waves of her hair fall over her tear-streaked face and her twisting mouth and her gorgeous neck, her tiny shoulders, her lovely breasts. I'm starting to pant and I feel warm all over, and suddenly I'm starving for her and I slide my hands to the small of her back and pull her close to me. She gasps quietly at the change in position, but after a moment she relaxes to it and slides her arms around my middle, buries her face in the joint where my neck and shoulder meet. And I hold onto her so tight, so tight that she'll never get free, I'll never let her go, and we hug each other and she cries as we make love. 

**Tuesday, January 9th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**/ Sara/**

After staring at her so long that my eyes become fixed, I start to get sleepy again. Which is stupid, because I've been sleeping for hours, but my body wants what it wants, and there's no reasoning with it. I yawn, which hurts, and then try and blink the cotton of sleep out of my eyes. It's not really working.

After a moment of this battle, I hear a small movement and go immediately back to Reagan watching. But it looks like a false alarm. She's just made a little sleep noise, and she moves her hand a little twitch.

"Reagan?" I whisper hoarsely, willing to wake her but not wanting to wake poor Mom. "Reagan?"

"Mm."

My heart leaps inside my chest. "Reagan, are you awake?"

Her hand moves again, balls and then withdraws to somewhere more shadowy.

"Mm-hmm," she murmurs. "A little."

Her voice is low and very gravelly. I wonder if this is from sleep or drugs or pain. "Are you okay?"

She yawns quietly. Apparently that's painful for her, too; she makes a little hurt noise afterwards.

"I'm okay," she says slowly, like she had to weigh her answer before she spoke it.

"The nurse said you were stabbed," I say, noting and not really minding the accusatory agent in my voice. 

"Yeah," she says hollowly. "Four times."

I go kind of numb. I don't know what to say to her.

"Did it hurt?" I ask stupidly.

She laughs shortly. "No, it was great," she says sarcastically. Then she quiets for a minute. "It hurt. A lot." She pauses again. "The worst part . . . bleeding to death. It feels like suffocating. Your blood's all leaving you, and you can feel it as your veins empty, but you can't do anything about it. It doesn't hurt, but it's terrifying."

"I'm sorry," I breathe. Then I'm less sorry. "You moron. What the Hell did you think you were doing?"

"I thought I could end this. And that I could punish him for what he did to you." 

"It didn't work."

"No," she murmurs, sounding a little distracted. "I wasn't strong enough." She pauses. "I mean, physically, yes. I could have . . . I should have been able to beat him. But emotionally? I wasn't ready for that." 

"What did he say to you?"

She sighs. "I . . . he can just be so much like Daddy, you know? I mean, he can . . . mimic. And it's horrible." She pauses again. She's having difficulty collecting her thoughts tonight. "He asked me if I was jealous."

Huh? "Jealous?"

She makes a frustration noise in the back of her throat. "Of you. Because . . . because he fucked you." There's something sinking in my stomach, a horrible gnawing thing. "He asked me if I was jealous, if I wished he'd chosen me."

Her voice is deadpan while she says all of this. I can't breathe.

"What did you say?" I ask her. Breathlessly.

"I started crying. I . . . I thought about Daddy, and about . . . about Angelus, and how you must have felt when you realized . . ." She chokes on something, suddenly, and I wonder if she's crying. "When you realized what he was going to do to you." She pauses, swallows thickly. "And then he stabbed me."

"I imagine that the conversation pretty much died at that point," I say dully, then immediately regret my choice of wording.

Reagan doesn't notice. She laughs that short laugh again. "Actually, no."

"So what did you talk about while he was stabbing you? The weather?"

"No. He offered to turn me."

I'm stunned. "What?"

"He asked me if I wanted to die, and I said no. Then he offered to turn me."

"Like . . . into a vampire?"

She snorts. "No, into a star. Yes, 'into a vampire,' Sara."

"But I thought Giles said he wasn't a real vampire."

"Well . . . he's not. But I guess he can still do that." She pauses. "Or, at least he thinks he can."

I'm still baffled. "But why would he want to do that?"

"I don't know that he did," she says dully. "He was just asking me to see what I'd say. He was playing a game with me."

"What did you say?"

"I told him to go to Hell."

Her voice is flat, honest, and I laugh when I realize she's telling the truth. "Good for you. Then what?"

"Then Giles and Uncle Xander came and saved my ass about three seconds before he killed me."

"Good timing." 

"You ain't kiddin'."

"But . . . you're really okay?" I venture.

"Alive and kickin'," she murmurs. Then, "Well, alive and unable to move very much, but . . . you know. _Alive_."

**/ Buffy/**

I have fever dreams all night long, and wake up in the dark plagued by the kind of uncomfortable wrongness that makes you want to claw into your veins and remove the itch. I almost do; my fingers are slithering toward the suicide point on my wrists when I sit up and see my little girls lying long and still in the darkness. Their machines make little machine noises, but the two of them are silent. 

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick, but it's enough to slacken my fingers before I tear open my veins, before I tear myself apart.

I get up from the bed and – not stopping to check on my daughters – I walk past the beds and the machines and the light coming in through the door to the dinky, cramped bathroom at the end of the room. I lift the lid of the toilet and throw up hospital coffee and . . . that's it. I don't think I've eaten in days. After my stomach's empty, and after I've steeled my fragile body against the self-indulgent dry heaves, I stand, flush the toilet, and turn on the tap. I wash out my mouth and then take great desperate drinks of water, drinking water like breathing. I splash water over the burning skin of my face again and again until I want to cry; it's like being slapped.

I turn off the water and hang dripping over the sink for a moment before righting myself. There's a paper-thin towel hanging listlessly on the towel rack that is, in this closet of a bathroom, a breath from me at the sink. I take the stupid cheap towel and rub my face and hair with it. It hurts, and when I've finished, my face is rubbed red and my hair is a mess.

I don't care.

I go to turn off the bathroom light before realizing that I never turned it on, then drop the cheap towel on the side of the sink and come back into the main room. I walk slowly into the room, and this time I do stop; the first bed I come to is Sara's, and I stay there a long time, just watching her sleep, my hands hovering over her face, her hair.

The cast or whatever for her nose is still there, all puffy and big and strange-looking, but the swelling in her face has started to go down, the bruises and cuts healing, and she's starting to look more like herself. I kiss her forehead and walk over to Reagan's bed. Reagan's face is fine; there's one cut on her cheek, but otherwise she looks exactly like herself, all quiet and still like she was sleeping in her own bed at home. But if you look away from that, you can see that her blankets aren't right. Past her throat – undamaged, this time – and her collarbone and her breasts that she shouldn't even have yet because she's my _baby_, the blankets are wrong. Instead of following the curves of my daughter's burgeoning body, it lies absolutely flat, like laying a jacket over a chair. I let my hand rest there briefly; it's hard. They've trussed her up in this tape and bandage corset that's supposed to keep her sutures intact, or something stupid and medicinal like that.

I glance briefly back at Sara, and realize – with a stupid lateness – that her real injuries are under the blankets, too.

I have never in my life been more angry.

I let this happen. I didn't see the First coming; I couldn't protect Angel from her. And then I couldn't stop his raising, and I didn't kill him when I had the chance. And I didn't run right out the next night and track him down like the filthy beast he is, that night or a dozen other nights. I'm lucky my children aren't dead. This is my fault. I did this.

Is that why I offered myself to Xander? Penance? Maybe. I don't know. The thought of having sex with anyone ever again makes me want to run back to the bathroom. And when I thought of him touching me, of his hands on my breasts, his mouth on mine, it felt like dying. Not the death that lay in Angel's kisses, but the death I found under the water.

Oh, Christ, I wish he'd done it. I wish I'd died.

I feel weak all of a sudden, and I sit shakily on the edge of Reagan's bed. She doesn't notice, doesn't move, but I make sure not to disturb her. I rub my hands over my eyes. My face feels hot. I feel sick again. I think of lying facedown in that claw-footed bathtub in Angel's and my bathroom, and it feels the same. If Xander'd fucked me . . . I would have died. He would've filled me with his come and it would have poisoned me, it would have turned me into an ugly carbon shell, I would have blackened and crumbled and just been nothing.

Is that why he refused? Because he looked in my eyes and saw self-destruction? Why does he care? Why does he keep _doing_ this to me? I don't want to be rescued! I want the water, I want the dark. I want to close my eyes and never wake up again. I just want to be someplace quiet, someplace I don't feel like I can't breathe.

Beside me, Reagan shifts a little, and her warm hand rests against my back. I look briefly back at her, then at Sara, and I bring my hands to my face before I even realize I'm crying. I am so selfish. I am a horrible mother, I am a horrible person. I murder them and then I try to abandon them, just because it hurts _me_ too bad.

They deserve better than this.

**/ Xander/**

I stand in the doorway a long time before I come in. I think for a second that maybe I'll leave, but then the Masculine Xander voice in my head kicks in, and I know I'll have to face her sooner or later . . . so I walk in.

Buffy's tidying up the little table by the window. It's strewn with flowers and balloons and teddy bears from all of us, and she's picking up fallen petals and making things neat. Her hair's French braided messily, and she's wearing old jeans and a dress shirt of Angel's, rolled up at the sleeves. She doesn't look nearly as beautiful or vulnerable as she did last night, but I'm suddenly flooded with every moment of it.

I think about leaving again.

I almost do, but suddenly she turns around, and I'd feel stupid just running away because she's spotted me. Although when her expression changes to bitter when she sees who I am, I entertain the thought again.

"Hi," she says quietly. The muscles in her face are all very taut, and her eyes are colored with betrayal the way a hurt child's is: absolutely, unflinchingly. Without comprehension, just the knowledge that you've hurt me, and now I hurt and I don't like you anymore.

"How are the girls?"

I think maybe it's unfair to use them as a conversation opener, but it seems preferable to the alternative.

She shrugs and walks past me to the garbage can. A confetti of petals fall from her hand; she watches them disappear into the dark of the wastebasket before turning back to me.

"They're fine. Not better, not worse." She pauses. "They sleep a lot."

"Well, you know, they're healing, and the doctors probably have them pretty drugged—"

"Look, Xander," she says suddenly. "I didn't . . . last night was not about me being weak, or depraved." 

My jaw falls. "I didn't think—"

Her mouth works a little in dissatisfaction, her eyes brim slightly with tears. She looks like a pre-tantrum child, and the part of me that can forget last night wants to run and hold her while she cries.

"I didn't . . . it wasn't because I feel guilty, or because I—" She pauses, her mouth twisting in frustration. But not at me. She's angry with herself. "—wanted sex."

She stops again, lowers her eyes. Her lashes are heavy with the dew of tears.

"I just . . . this has been very hard for me, and I wanted you to understand how much your being here has meant to me. I wanted to give you what you deserved for supporting me."

Her mouth tightens all of a sudden; her voice remains the same melancholy.

"I don't want you telling anyone."

I start to protest, but her eyes flash and I think better of it.

"It's not because I'm ashamed—" She lowers her eyes again. "Which I am, I guess. I acted immaturely, and inappropriately, and I'm . . ." She shakes her head. "But it's not about that. I just . . . I don't want my kids hearing about it, okay? They wouldn't understand, and –"

I walk to her and take her by the arms. Not _in_ my arms, but I put my hands on her biceps to get her attention, to ground her.

"Buffy," I say evenly. "Even if I could hurt _you_ by . . ." I gesture a little, unable to say it. "Even if I could hurt you, I'd never hurt your kids. I promise, okay?"

She takes this as acceptable, and nods. Then she breaks gently away from me and goes back to straightening up the table by the window.

"Buffy?" I ask after a minute of silence.

"Hmm?"

"We're okay, aren't we?"

She glances at me briefly.

"We're fine," she says, but her voice sounds hollow.

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

**/ Reagan /**

Hospital time isn't like normal time. You wake up and it's midnight, and the halls are dark, and then before you even know you've fallen asleep, you're waking up again and it's a different day and the entire world has changed around you. I remember Daddy telling us bedtime stories when we were little, one about gargoyles; they came alive at night, but as soon as the sun rose, they turned back to stone. It's like that. When you close your eyes, you turn to stone, and the world moves on around you like you don't even exist, like you're just part of the building.

I closed my eyes after talking to Sara about Angelus last night, and when I wake up again, the sun is shining and my mother's cot is empty and folded away. She's sitting beside the window, reading out of some dusty old book. Her hair's pulled back and she looks very tired. There's a pile of books on the windowsill beside her; I glance over the titles. It's all occult stuff; she's reading up on the First. She yawns and goes to turn the page . . .

Before I know it, I'm waking up again. Mom's moved her chair to between my and Sara's beds; she sees me open my eyes and she smiles down at me. The books are gone.

"Hi, sweetie," she whispers. Mom always speaks with a low voice when she's in hospitals, which is something I find unusual, because she doesn't hold her voice in churches or libraries, just on the battlefield. "How are you feeling?"

"Really drugged."

She frowns. "You are pretty . . . they've been giving you a lot of medicine. Painkillers and stuff. I can ask them if they can let up—" 

"It's okay. It's just kind of a drowsy feeling, is all. Nothing life-threatening."

She doesn't look as though she appreciates my choice of words. "How's your belly?"

"I can't really feel anything," I say truthfully. "Except the cast feels heavy."

"Is it hard to breathe?"

"No." 

She starts to ask another question after my health, but she looks so pained when we're talking about that that I quickly ask a question of my own to drive her off track.

"What time is it?"

She glances at her wristwatch. "Eleven thirty." She looks up at me, concerned. "Why? Are you hungry?"

"I just didn't know," I respond slowly. "And definitely not." 

She wrinkles her brow for a moment, not comprehending. She probably hasn't been sleeping well. "Huh?"

"I'm not hungry."

She looks worried. "Maybe you should try and eat something."

"Did the doctors say I should?"

She still looks worried.

"No. I say that." The concern on her face lessens somewhat. "But that may be Mom Logic. Somehow, everything's a little easier to handle if your children have eaten recently."

"That's weird, Mom."

She nods. "Yeah, I know. Being a mom is . . . really strange."

"But in a good way, right?"

She smiles. "Of course." Beat. "You guys are the best thing I ever did." She frowns briefly. "I mean, I know that sounds corny and clichéd, but it's true." 

"But you've saved the world a bunch."

She shrugs. "Someone else could have done that. No one else could have made you."

I don't know what to say to that. Instead, I ask, "You like being a mom. Did you like being pregnant?"

She considers a moment.

"Yes," she answers slowly. "My pregnancies were . . . not easy, but ultimately I did enjoy being pregnant. I liked having that time with you."

"Why weren't they easy?"

She frowns. "They just weren't. Angel says that Slayers weren't meant to be mothers; my pregnancies were painful. And I had a lot of Slayer dreams while I was pregnant. Especially when I was carrying you and Sara."

"Not with Michael and Lexi?"

"Some with Michael and Lexi. But much more with you; I'd have a dream every night." She pauses for a moment. "But when I was pregnant with Lexi, I had a lot of prophetic dreams."

"That's kind of strange."

"Well, I've always had them . . ."

"I know." I frown. "How come I don't? Isn't that a Slayer power I'm 'sposed to get?" 

She frowns, too. "I don't know. I don't really think it comes standard with the Slayer package; different Slayers have different skills. Like you can sense vampires and Sara can't, that kind of thing."

I pout. "That sucks. Most of the time, you can figure out who's a vampire. The ESP would have been more helpful."

She smiles ruefully. "Maybe not. Didn't help me see any of this, did it?"

I start to make a comforting remark, but suddenly, her face clouds, gripped with some far away question.

"Yes, it did," she says softly, still looking far off.

"What?"

"He told me . . . in the kitchen . . . and then again, at the high school . . ."

She looks so intent on this invisible thing that I get kind of frightened.

"Mommy?" I ask fearfully.

Her green eyes focus and jump up to me.

"I . . . I did have dreams," she says softly. "I just . . . didn't know what they meant. Not until it was too late."

"Why would the Powers That Be give you useless dreams?"

She sighs. "They're not useless. I mean, not really. I just . . . I wasn't smart enough to figure them out." She pauses. "And I'm not a Seer. I've pretty much had my allotment of super powers from the PTB. They try to throw me a line every once in a while, but I'm not really tuned into their network." She pauses again, looks at me earnestly. "Listen to me, Reagan. I know . . . I know that things have gone really, really badly lately, that some really, really bad things have happened. And that right now, it's difficult to believe that there are people – forces – in this world that are on your side, that are looking out for you. But it's true. There's always a backbone there. Even if you don't have your family – and, thank God, you do, baby – you always have the strength of all that's good in the world on your side. Even if it seems like you're fighting the good fight alone, you never are. There's always someone looking over your shoulder."

"Is this a God thing?"

She sighs. "I . . . not really. I mean, kind of. It's more of an if-you're-doing-the-right-thing thing, but it's . . . it's kind of confusing. Those things get in the way of each other all the time."

"Mom, do you believe in God?"

"I . . ." she sighs. "No. And yes. I mean, it's complicated. I tend to think that there's some _thing_ good looking out for us, and . . . you know, spiting me when things are down – which is an attitude you should really fight against developing, by the way – but I don't . . ." She smiles a little, not a happy smile. "When Angel died, I all but renounced God. I had it all set up in my head that He had abandoned me, or – worse – that He was punishing me for something. I said horrible things to Him, things that I really, really meant, and I . . . I wanted Him gone, I wanted Him away from me." She pauses, wets her lips. "But when the doctors let me into your room after your surgery, when they let me see you lying there, I prayed for your life before I even realized what I was doing." She takes a deep breath and looks at me with great seriousness. "I don't know anything about religion. I don't really understand the communion, or the Tao, or how they make holy water or anything. But I know that there's something bigger than us, something _good_ out there." She smiles wryly. "Whether it's helping us or not is still up for debate, but it's kind of comforting, isn't it, to know that we're not alone?"

**/ Sara /**

They're making me go to therapy. _Therapy._ I thought, when the nurse first tottered somberly in with the news, that they meant, like, physical therapy or something, although the thought of physical therapy for my . . . you know . . . wasn't really appealing. But it was more understandable than _this_ than them making me go to a fucking shrink. I'm not crazy! I didn't try to kill myself, I didn't do anything crazy! I didn't do anything wrong. I don't understand.

I say this to the nurse. Several times. Loudly. She doesn't act as though I have much choice in the matter, dodging my questions and saying it'll be for my own good. Then she flat out tells me that I don't have any choice in the matter, and waddles out of the room.

"Stupid doctors," I growl to Reagan, who is awake and watching me and the fat nurse. "Can you believe this?"

She doesn't look nearly as outraged as she should.

"Maybe . . . maybe it'll be good for you," she says slowly, the not-really-outraged look kind of gelling into concern. "I mean, you have been through –"

I glare at her. What the Hell is she thinking?

"I'm not crazy, Reagan," I inform her firmly. Okay, maybe I growl it at her, but what the Hell is she thinking? "Maybe they should see _you_; after all, I didn't try to kill myself."

She shuts up. Real quick.

**/ Reagan /**

I can't really turn over or, you know, do anything so proactive as to get up and storm out of the room, but I turn my head away from her, pretend she isn't there. Thanks a lot, Sara, way to take the moral high ground. Way to deal with your demons.

Usually my mute-brat behavior is the kind of thing that makes her go all weak and apologetic, but she doesn't, she just grumbles to herself a little and then quiets. Great. I'm a fucking prisoner next to a crazy person until the great gaping wound in my belly heals.

Okay. That was mean. She's not crazy. Not unless being insufferably self-righteous is a mental illness, which I doubt.

Damn. I wish I had a Walkman or something.

**/ Sara /**

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have made that jab about her and the suicide thing. Who knew that was the kind of thing she'd take to heart?

Okay, I did. But dammit, what the Hell was she thinking? She's supposed to be on my side.

Traitor.

**/ Reagan /**

Is it bad that the first thing I think of, after how I know I'm being a brat and how that's unlikely to solve much, is how badly I want Mom here to mediate? She's gone off to the cafeteria for some coffee, or maybe just to be alone since she looks too thin to actually be consuming much, and left us here alone for the nurse's big revelation, for Sara and my big fight. Stupid. I'm a grownup, almost a grownup at least, I've killed things and I've had sex and I have a driver's license; I should be self-reliant. I shouldn't want her here to reinforce me, but that's the first thing that comes to mind.

Damn.

**/ Sara /**

Mom is back soon – she's never gone for too long since I've been in the hospital, and she began allowing less time for her absences after Reagan ran off to her great belly wound during one – and Reagan immediately blurts out that I'm insane and the hospital is insistent that I seek counseling. I am furious at my sister, but I'm sure that Mom will understand my side of things and explain to the doctors that I'm not some psycho, that I don't need professional help to set my brain in order.

She listens to Reagan passively, no emotion coloring her face, and then she takes a long time to digest the information.

"I know," she says after a moment, then goes to her cot against the wall and starts pawing through the big stack of Giles's books she's got covering most of her sleeping space.

"Wait," I say, trying not to sound indignant. "You know what?"

"They told me about having you meet with a therapist," she says like it's nothing, like it's less than my stitches or the brace on my nose, and opens up a book.

"And you told them it was stupid, right?" I insist. "That I don't need it."

She looks tired. She looks up at me from her demonology book looking so old, so unlike my mother.

"No," she says softy. "I told them that was fine, and I asked if our insurance covers it."

Traitor! Traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor! How could my own mother sell me down the river like this?

"What? I don't understand! Mom, I'm not crazy, how can you let them—"

She rakes a hand through her hair, like she does when something in her is wearing thin.

"Sara, I know you're not crazy. I never said anything to the contrary. They're not going to commit you; they just want to talk to you for a little while about what happened."

"I—"

"It can't hurt, Sara," she says heavily, a bit of a snap to her voice, and I know that there's no sense in pursuing it further. I look over at Reagan, who should be looking smug, but isn't; she's looking up at the ceiling looking very calm and very sad.

I don't say anything to her, either. I have nothing to say to anyone, including the stupid therapist.

I'm fine. Why am I the only one that sees that?

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Buffy spent the rest of the night studying her books, cold and uncomfortable sitting there against the window, cold in the blood and uncomfortable in her own skin. Sara, angry, declined to initiate conversation with her mother or her sister, which was actually for the best since Buffy was too nervous to talk and Reagan was too exhausted and too drugged. The nurse who had told her about her appointment with the therapist the next afternoon came again with their suppers, and Sara let out her pregnant frustrations by being covertly ugly to her. Buffy, who should have cared, didn't notice because she was too busy researching the First and feeling like something was crawling beneath her skin.

Reagan slept through dinner and the rest of the night, lulled to sleep by the liberal medications in her IV and the soft music notes of the rain, which began to fall quietly on the hospital. Sara, too, let the gentle noises sooth her irritated countenance, and after resolving her imaginary battle with her mother and her sister, fell to an uneventful if not peaceful sleep.

The rain bristled Buffy further, aggravated the thing living under her skin. The words on the pages before her stopped making sense, and she took frequent breaks, dropping the books – which were growing heavier with every second the rain dropped, imbued by the ugly grayness of the world outside – to her cot and pacing the cold tile floors restlessly, hovering nervously over her children's sleeping faces, beginning to brave the halls but failing repeatedly under the scrutiny of the bright lights and white coats, and instead seeking refuge in the tiny in-suite bathroom with only the echo of the rain, the dim reflection of her thin face in the darkened mirror, and her shame of her last visit there to haunt her.

When she finally found sleep it was fitful, but it was also dreamless, and she thanked God or whoever for that, because she was pretty sure she couldn't stand to see Angel's face again.

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"It wasn't really a big deal," Sara was saying, looking up at the ceiling from her hospital bed. "I mean, some of the questions were less than fun, but generally it was pretty straightforward: _How are you feeling right now? Are you angry because . . . ?_ Stuff like that."

Reagan, in her own bed and staring at her own patch of ceiling, was a moment in responding.

"But you . . . you're not okay with it?"

"What do you mean?" 

Reagan measured her words carefully before letting them out into the open. "I mean . . . all this therapy and stuff is great, but . . . you haven't really dealt, right?"

Sara's lips pursed. "Of course I have. That's the point; the therapy's stupid because I've dealt with it already. I don't need help." 

"It's okay to not be okay with this—"

Sara sat up angrily; it afforded her a better view of her target. "Is it okay if I _am_ okay? Why do you have to make everything so serious?"

Reagan tried to sit up, found she couldn't, and resigned herself to the ceiling. "This _is_ serious! I'm not being a drama queen about it; you were—"

Sara huffed. "I know. I remember what happened; I was there, remember?"

"I wasn't implying that you didn't get it; I just . . . I worry that you're not properly dealing with this. I don't want you to be any more hurt than . . . than what he did to you."

Sara adjusted her tone, hearing the real worry in her sister's voice. 

"This isn't . . . it's not a big deal," she said gently. "I mean, it's something that happened to me, like lots of things happen to me on patrol. I fight evil, Reagan, and sometimes bad things happen."

"I know, but—"

"No buts. It's like getting cut, getting a bruise; it's just something that happens when you're dealing with the forces of darkness. Yeah, it's unpleasant, but it's nothing personal; you heal and then you get on with your life."

"So you're completely over it?" Reagan asked quietly.

"Yes." 

Reagan finally dropped her eyes to her sister. "Is that why you haven't told Stephan what happened to you?"

Sara started to think up a plausible excuse, but before any words could leave her lying mouth, a voice from the doorway cut her off.

"He'd probably throw her to the wind is why. Nice looking fella like that, athlete, he can probably have his pick of _unspoiled_ cheerleader ass, don't you think?"

Simultaneously, the twins' attentions snapped to the doorway. Angelus was leaning against the doorframe, grinning, holding a bouquet of white tulips. 

"You," Reagan whispered, going a world of pale. She tried again to sit up, and was again unable.

Beside her, Sara slid off the bed and to her feet.

"Get out," she said, her voice quiet but hard.

He laughed. "Oh, well, by all means. I'll just be off, then, spooked away by your Big. Scary. Words." 

He walked into the room, shutting the door smoothly behind him. Sara looked around vainly for a weapon; she couldn't see one. She looked to her sister for help; Reagan looked frozen, staring petrified at the advancing vampire.

"How you ladies feeling?" he asked smoothly, coming up to Reagan's bedside. 

Panicked, she tried again to sit up, this time forcing herself past the pain threshold. It worked, but at a price; she felt a tear of pain and a bloom of warmth beneath her cast as she forced herself up and to her feet.

Angelus cocked his head, looked at her curiously.

"I was sure I'd killed you," he purred, walking to her. "I mean, the little interruption before our last, glorious moment was unfortunate, but that wound should have been fatal."

Reagan held her ground, white lipped, but partially because she was too dizzy to move much. Sara moved beside her, put a hand on her arm – for comfort, it appeared, but really to steady her.

Angelus was still talking about his disappointment at Reagan's failure to shuffle off the mortal coil. "Fucking Slayers. What can you do?" He shrugged and gestured with his bouquet. "Anyway, I figured you'd've kicked it by now, so I only brought enough flowers for one."

He proffered the tulips to Sara; she stared at him stonily. He acted as if she'd given him a grand reception, and grinned lustily at her, running his eyes unsubtly over her pajama-clad frame, lingering over her unbound breasts and the still-bandaged place between her legs.

"How are you feeling, sweetheart?" he asked silkily. When she didn't answer, his nostrils flared briefly, and he grinned.

"Nothing like the smell of newly despoiled virgin first thing in the evening," he tried darkly, leering at her.

She flushed and trembled with rage, forced herself to set her jaw and take a step toward him. 

"Fuck you," she spat.

The smile faded from his face; he dropped the flowers without ceremony. They crashed quietly to the ground around his feet.

"Show a little respect," he said tightly, taking a step through the tulips and closing the distance between them. They were inches a part now, their eyes locked, their feet surrounded by the same graveyard of the white crushed skulls of the discarded bouquet.

"You aren't my father."

The corner of his mouth quirked into something that was less a smile than a baring of fangs. "I meant the kind of _respect_ you should have for someone who could rip your throat out in a second."

Sara's hand tightened around Reagan's arm, but she forced herself to remain composed. "Try me."

He smiled the fang-baring smile again before taking her up on her offer. He lunged for her; she parried his advance with an upraised forearm and a quick jab to the solar plexus; he stumbled only for a moment, but it was enough for her to get away. She ran to her mother's purse at the far end of the room and retrieved a stake; meanwhile, Angelus righted himself and stalked after her. Reagan – disquietly aware of the thin trickle of blood leaking from under her plaster corset and of just how little chance she really had – wrenched the lamp on the bedside table from its fixtures and crashed it into the back of Angelus's head before he could come upon her sister. It shattered, and he stumbled for a minute – but too brief a moment, as his immediate action after righting himself was to wheel around, grab Reagan by the throat, and throw her across the room. She hit the far wall violently, and crumpled to the ground in a shower of pleasantly muted plaster.

Angelus wasted a moment looking after her to make sure she was sufficiently downed to ensure against future lamp attacks before turning back to Sara. She was cowering against Buffy's folded cot, stake in hand; the violence against Reagan was so extreme and so immediate, she hadn't been prepared, and she was frightened, unsure of herself now.

"_If you're a good girl, Daddy's not going to hurt you. Do you understand that, Sara?"_

He was not oblivious to her new fear; on the contrary, he was lapping it up eagerly. He walked to her slowly, grinning.

"What's the matter, girl? You were all balls and curse words a second ago; somethin' cool you off?"

He came closer, delighting in the fear in her eyes; it flowered with direct correlation to how close he got.

Her mouth trembled as she tried to grasp a response; she let out a squeak as he stepped to within arms' length of her.

"Come on, Sara," he purred. "Kick my ass."

She looked down briefly at the stake, and then back up. The fear cleared from her eyes.

"Don't have to," she whispered, backing a little more against the cot.

He scoffed. "What, you think I'm just going to walk out that door and leave you all alone?"

She nodded. "I think you will." 

He smirked. "And why's that?"

"Because Mommy's home," Buffy said quietly from the doorway.

Angelus veered around to find the tiny blonde Slayer standing in the doorframe; the door was suddenly ajar – he didn't know how he could have missed hearing it open – and she looked beautiful and pissed, her eyes narrowed, her arms crossed over her chest.

He smiled. "Darling."

"Get out," she growled.

He took a few steps forward, the smile fading. "Sorry, honey, but there's a lot I've got planned for these girls, and visitation hours are almost over."

"You are not touching my children."

He glanced at the crater crack of plaster in the far wall. "Too late."

Buffy's eyes followed the landslide down to where Reagan lay, motionless and half-covered by rubble. Her jaw twitched, but she composed herself quickly.

"Get out," she repeated, walking toward him.

He watched her come to him, smiling; he waited until she was just breaths from him before replying.

"Make me," he purred, lowering his face so that it was inches from hers, so that he could meet her eyes and smell the sweet scent of her anger.

Without hesitation, she shot a fist into his nose. There was a sharp crack, and Angelus bent to cover his newly bleeding face. As he bowed, Buffy grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him against the opposing wall. He hit hard and crumpled momentarily; Buffy turned to Sara.

"Stake."

Sara threw it immediately; Buffy caught it one-handed and then turned back to Angelus, who was coming back to his feet. His nose was crooked and bleeding – clearly broken – and he was glaring daggers at her. 

"Bitch."

"Get out," she said again, walking to him.

When he failed to comply, she used her free hand to stab another punch at him. He anticipated this one and caught her by the wrist, bending her arm back; before he could break her arm, she shot out with the stake hand and swung down hard. Angelus took notice, but only just in time; he let go of her arm and turned to avoid the blow, but he wasn't quick enough; she missed the heart but landed the stake hard home higher up in his chest. She pulled back the bleeding wood and began to come at him again; enraged, he rushed her, charging her in a linebacker's tackle to the opposite wall, into banks of machinery. She hit with a clatter of warping metal and a crunch of broken glass, then pulled him forward by the arm and threw him into the shower of shards on the floor. Half-blinded by a face full of glass and fully incensed, he didn't even get up for his next attack; he swept her legs out from under her and pulled her to the floor. Wrestling to get up, Buffy caught Sara coming forward out of the corner of her eye.

"No!" she called to her daughter, and the girl stopped. "Get your sister and get out of here. RIGHT. NOW."

If Sara had thought of arguing, her mother's tone convinced her otherwise; she followed orders immediately, running to pick up Reagan and then hightailing it out of the room, leaving Buffy to fend off Angelus alone.

"Alone at last," Angelus purred, grabbing her by the back of the head and slamming her head down into the glass-covered linoleum.

She grunted in pain and, instead of struggling against the strength of his hand on her head, stabbed him in thigh with her stake. He howled and let go of her immediately; she grabbed her stake back and jumped to her feet, vainly brushing glass and blood off her face.

"Bitch," he growled again, and stood painfully. His injured leg would not fully hold his weight; it bowed a bit under the pressure, and he immediately began to favor the other one. "I'm getting tired of these games, girl."

"Then hold still and let me stake you. It'll make things much easier for both of us."

He sneered. "You think I'm going to make any of this easy for you, princess?"

He started to laugh, although Buffy couldn't see a damn thing that was anywhere near funny; she began to advance on him again, but before she could get close enough to do any damage, Angelus turned quickly and grabbed the machinery that was still standing and pushed the ruins of metal, plastic, and glass forward with all his might. Even for wreckage, it was heavy, and it hit her hard; Buffy went down. Angelus took her momentary lapse to run from the room.

Buffy cried out in fury, pushed the machines off of her, and, ignoring all the bleeding she seemed to be doing, bolted to her feet and ran after him.

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
Lake Street**

The rain was coming down in torrents, soaking her skin, her hair, limiting her vision to only a few feet in any direction. It was like being in the jungle, trapped and blinded by the lush lay of the land.

After he got far enough away from her that she couldn't follow the broad line of his back, the pale flash of his skin, she listened to the hammering of his feet on the slick ground and followed that instead. Every now and then, he'd laugh, but that was harder; the rain distorted the noise so that it echoed ubiquitously; he was everywhere and nowhere, and she was lost until the solid noise of his running came back.

The stake was still in her hand and she'd stopped bleeding, for the most part. Her muscles, her lungs were starting to burn with the running and the cold sting of the rain.

She couldn't stop. 

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

A doctor cut off Reagan's cast and mended her torn stitches while Sara made up some lie about how her parents had had a really ugly divorce and their coming together always resulted in fighting, things being thrown. The doctor nodded like he wasn't really listening and wrapped new bandages around Reagan's middle. She was pale, listless, barely awake. The doctor gave her a shot and she fell asleep almost immediately, oblivious to the candy stripers coming in and clearing the debris of the wall and the old machines, wheeling in more heart monitors like they were beaten into junk metal every day.

Sara sat huddled on her bed next to the broken wall and watched Reagan sleep, hoping that her mother was okay. 

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
New Sunnydale High School**

He lagged after not too long, no match for her, not with his injured leg. After chasing him for a mile or two – the distance didn't matter, was impossible to tell; she couldn't see landmarks, so the only real measurement was the burning in her lungs, the ache in her muscles, and she'd managed to block all that out – he came suddenly into focus through the driving rain; he was slowing, and she'd caught up to him, was close enough to him to see him. He was panting, limping, slightly bent, but still running; she kept running, too, and ran into him at full force, driving him to the ground. He fell hard, with her on top of him; she could feel the asphalt abrade the palm of her hand where it hit the ground, and knew – in the brief second before the rain washed the red away – that Angelus had been scraped, too. He shouldered her off, growling; she looked at his face, and knew she'd been right; he was bleeding, his right cheek torn. She didn't advance, and he didn't run: they just stayed there for a long moment, pensively poised.

"You'd better stop following me, girl," he growled, but it lacked the gusto his threats usually had. She'd run him out, worn him down. His leg was still bleeding where she'd stabbed him.

"Not a chance."

He studied her for another moment, trying to judge her intentions. As soon as he'd made his decision, he tried to run again; Buffy ran after him, tackled him. She felled him easily, then got up and waited, watching quietly, for him to get up. He tried to run again, and she knocked his legs out from under him with a sweep of one of hers.

She watched passively as he came to his feet once more. He ran again, but when she caught him this time, he turned violently around and swung recklessly at her. She countered his blow easily, then balled her fist and socked him hard in the face. He fell off balance and, without thinking, tried to ground himself by putting all his weight on his bad leg. He wavered a little, and she wasted no time in helping him topple over, snapping a kick at his midsection. He crumpled, howling. She landed a good kick to his belly before he could right himself, then knelt on the wet asphalt beside him, turned him over onto his back, and grabbed him up by his shirtfront.

"Don't," he said softly, stupidly. He was wearing his human guise, and – for one stupid, weak moment – Buffy imagined his eyes without the sheen of demon lurking behind them, just soft and dark and Angel's.

She swallowed this image immediately and, before he could struggle, brought up the stake and drove it home.

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018   
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

"_They've told me you didn't want to talk to the police about what happened. Is that true?"_

"I just don't want to talk about it. It's over."

"Don't you want the man who did this to be caught? Punished?"

"The police can't do anything." 

Dr. Levin looked at her over her wire-rimmed glasses, an expression that Giles had.

"Sara, do you know _the man who did this to you?"_

Sara shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The chairs were hard, rigid. She'd expected a long couch to lie down on, like in the movies. Dr. Levin just had these uncomfortable upright chairs that hurt her ribs and her . . . her other places that Angelus had hurt.

"No," she answered tightly.

"Most women are raped by someone they know." 

"I said no. What is this? I thought you were supposed to help me deal; this feels like a punishment, an interrogation."

"I am here to help you, Sara. I'm here to listen to anything you have to say."

"I don't have anything to say. Can I go?" 

"No. Sara, you know it isn't your fault that you were raped. You're the victim, it—"

"I feel like the victim of you_. Let me go."_

"You have to stay for the whole hour. We can sit here in silence, or we can make use of this time. I'm here to help you. You can tell me anything, and I have to keep it secret; I can't do anything with the information but use it to help you."

Sara sat silent, her cheeks drawn taut, her eyes lowered.

"You're just going to not say anything for—" The doctor checked her watch. "Forty-nine minutes?"

Sara raised her eyes.

"You can't tell anyone?" she asked slowly.

The corner of Dr. Levin's mouth quirked imperceptibly. "Not a soul."

Sara waited a long moment before speaking.

"I let him do it," she whispered finally. "He said if I was good and laid still and just let him, then . . . then he wouldn't kill me. I was afraid. Is that—is that even still rape? Because . . . I let him . . ." 

"Of course it is," Dr. Levin murmured encouragingly. "Rape is any unwanted sexual act."

She handed Sara a tissue from the box on her desk; the girl took it curiously, not realizing for the longest time what it was for. Oh. She was crying. She was crying and she hadn't even . . . she hadn't even realized.

"I was afraid. I couldn't stop it; I wasn't strong enough. I couldn't kill him."

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
New Sunnydale High School**

Buffy stood slowly, dazed. With a clatter, she let the stake fall to the ground; she stepped back and watched as the rain slowly darkened the pale dusting of ashes where Angelus had been just moments before. 

She'd been touching him. She'd had her hands on him, and she'd been looking in his eyes that were almost Angel's, and now he was dust on the sidewalk, dust being washed into the gutters, washed away.

She was shaking.

She tried to walk away, but couldn't seem to force her muscles into action. Instead, she stood fixated on the ever-thinning pile of ashes, on what was left of the man that had been her husband.

It took her a long time to realize that she was crying, and the delay had nothing to do with confusing her tears with the rain.

Taking a deep breath, she steeled her resolve, and turned to go. As she turned, something bright sparked in the corner of her eye; she turned back violently, still keyed from the fight, anticipating a resurrection, anything. 

It was not a resurrection. It was a ring. Angel's Claddaugh ring, for some reason spared the fire of her actions, sitting half-buried under what was left of Angelus. Trembling, she bent and picked it up; it fit perfectly in her palm, like it was meant to be there, like it was a piece of herself that she was always meant to reclaim.

Steeling her resolve again, she turned and started to walk away; a bolt of lighting flashed, flooding the world with light, briefly igniting the dusky stone of the columns surrounding her, of the staircase leading up to heaven. She started, realizing where she was, and then looked up into the nothingness of the dark sky, the deep water mirroring of the rain.

She was almost laughing.

"Thank you, Angel," she whispered, then closed her fingers tighter around his ring and began the walk back to her children.

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
Sunnydale Memorial Hospital**

Buffy walked through the hospital in an utter calm. She was soaked with rain, and bleeding and battered from the fight, but she couldn't feel the chill of the rain or the pain of the wounds. People were looking at her, but she didn't notice, couldn't even feel them as she walked past them, brushed by them. She was at peace, her body sound, so complete and right that everything in the universe that didn't live inside her was gone. She could feel her breath and her heartbeat, the soundness of her flesh, with such awareness that the rest of the world seemed like illusion, the nurses brushing past her only specters, slightly see-through and moving in a pace too fast for this world. The hospital swirled around her, frenzied but not quite concrete.

After a minute, or days – she couldn't tell and it didn't matter, somehow – she found the familiar shores of her daughters' hospital room. She rested against the doorframe, looking in. The room had been tidied and the ruined machines replaced, and everything looked neat and clean and nothing like a battleground. Her girls were both in there on their beds, looking fine, Reagan sleeping quietly and Sara perched nervously on the very edge of her bed, watching her sister fretfully over the divide. Buffy stayed there, her body relaxed against the doorframe, for a long time before anything changed.

Sara's head raised slightly, all of a sudden, and she turned to face her in the doorway.

"Mom?"

Buffy didn't move. It was pleasant, comfortable, to let the doorframe hold her up.

"Hey," she said. She smiled a little.

Sara slid from the bed and padded over to her. Her bare feet made quiet noises on the linoleum, tiny soft echoes of the beacon her mother had used to hunt down Angelus.

"You're okay," she said anxiously, stilling in front of her mother. Her eyes narrowed suddenly in panic. "You are okay, right?"

"I'm fine," Buffy murmured. She brought up a hand to stroke Sara's hair; the girl looked worried, confused by the motion or by her mother's languor.

"Angelus?" Sara asked timidly. She took a long time to say the word, like she still wasn't convinced her mother was all right, like bringing up the demon would suddenly reveal the wounds she'd been hiding.

Buffy didn't answer. She didn't quite know how to explain.

Instead, she walked into the room, sat beside Reagan on her bed. She petted the sleeping child's hair, studied her blank peaceful face.

"Is she all right?" Buffy asked, not looking up.

Sara, concerned and confused, came and sat beside her on the bed. She watched her mother's face, not Reagan's, as she answered slowly. "She's fine. She tore a couple stitches, but the doctors patched her up."

Reagan moved a little under her mother's hand, arching somnolently into her touch.

"What happened with Angelus?" Sara asked again.

"I took care of it," Buffy replied numbly. 

Reagan mewled, turning her face against her mother's hip. 

"Did he get away? What happened?"

"He's dead."

Sara was a long moment responding, staring stupidly at her mother's calm face.

"You . . . you killed him?" she chanced after a moment, words stilted.

"I did," Buffy replied simply, her voice devoid of emotion or inflection, her face still aggravatingly calm, smiling over Reagan like the Madonna. 

Sara's lip trembled. "He's dead?"

Buffy looked up at her, emotion finally breaking in, creasing her brow in concern. "Sara? Honey?"

The girl laughed even as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. "It's stupid. I'm sorry, it's just—"

Quietly, Buffy took her daughter in her arms. Sara let herself relax against her mother's gentle warmth, let herself let go, let herself cry.

"Shh," Buffy hushed against her hair. "It's okay. It's over now. It's over."

**Wednesday, January 10th, 2018  
New Sunnydale High School**

Darla, always impeccably accessorized, did not have an umbrella. This might seem odd to anyone viewing her from far away, giving the torrents of rain coming down, but it would seem far odder to anyone seeing her up close: it was like water was afraid to touch her; she was not wet at all: there was not a drop on her.

She was, however, livid, her black eyes burning with a violent fury, her jaw clenched tight. She walked purposefully to the sodden pile of ashes – what little was left; much of it had been washed away – that damn Slayer had made of her tool, her smart black heels clicking quietly on the wet sidewalk.

"Slayer bitch," she growled.

Creating Angelus had taken an enormous amount of energy, and – frankly – she was becoming exhausted. This next trick was going to cost her big; it had _better_ pay off, or the damn demon was going to be put through unimaginable torment.

Darla closed her eyes and quietly evanesced into a shimmering cloud. Still untouched by the rain, the vapor rushed through what was left of the ashes, stirring them into a whirlwind. Before they could settle, ashes and cloud transubstantiated under the dark of night and the ever-punishing rain; Darla, looking uncharacteristically pale and drawn, straightened her skirt and ignored the obvious agony that Angelus, naked and on his hands and knees, unable to rise for the pain, was enduring.

"This is your last chance," she said coldly. 

He suffered to raise his head to look at her, blinking water out of his eyes. (He was not waterproof). Her black eyes were narrowed dangerously at him, and she still looked murderous even as worn as she was.

When he didn't respond, she snapped a quick kick to his prone belly with her wickedly pointed patent leather heel. He moaned piteously and folded to the ground.

"Punish them," she said quietly. "Kill them. Kill them all, or this pain will seem like child's play. Understand?"

"Yes," he whispered to the pavement. "Yes, I'll do it."

She smiled. "Good. Good."


End file.
